Should alimony be abolished?

[worm761]

First off, I am sorry I offended you. I was my not my intent. Yes, what you do is work, I didn't mean that, I meant outside the home. I just was curious (not mad)when someone, not sure if it was you said they never had any plans to work outside the home and listed reasons that would eventually not apply when your kids are grown. I actually know many people of pre retirement age who jus don't feel the need to have a job outside the home and they have no children or they have grown ones.. Personally it is not for me because I get a lot of enjoyment out of my job but they must feel the same about being home. Actually, I wish I found more enjoyment in my house but that is not me. I can retire in ten years and hope I have grandchildren I can watch!

Sorry about derailing this thread.

I think it really just depends on your home life. While I loved my career, I love being home too. My DH prefers for me to be home when he gets home. Not several hours later. My career had loooong hours. So everything in the house ended up being left to him to do. Now I am home. I can clean before he gets home (a pointless task since I have a 3 year old. LOL) and I cook just about everything from scratch. I also do all the plotting and planning for our family whether it is doctor's appointments, saving money, meals, vacations or just days out.

And my world is slightly different since we homeschool and DS is autistic. But I try not to let those things come into play when having these kinds of discussions because they are not the norm.

 

[Turn the Page]

I could never be a SAHP. I just don't have the temperment for it. Even if working full time would only cover the cost of day care I think I would still work full time just to get out of the house for a few hours a week.

I do believe that being a SAHP is work though I, like many working parents, get a little offended at comments that imply day care is raising my kid or how hard a SAHP works. Yes, a SAHP does all the cooking, cleaning, laundry, taking care of sick kids, running errands, and playing chauffeur for activities but working parents do all that after having worked all day.

Onto the topic at hand. While being a SAHP is the best situation for some families I think people are naive in thinking it doesn't come with certain risks. The most obvious being what happens in the event of a divorce as discussed here. A lot of times the SAHP is faced with more drastic changes than the working parent is and is forced to try to find a job that will likely pay bupkis because they have been out of the workforce for however many years. It's a sad situation but that's the way it is. If a couple decides one of them will become a SAHP they should both realize that that is going to drastically affect the SAHP's earning potential in the event of a divorce.

A friend of the family was a SAHP for years then one day came home to a note from her husband saying he had gotten his girlfriend pregnant and wanted a divorce because he was going to marry the other woman and by the way, could you pack up all my stuff and leave it in the garage, I'll be by for it later. She advocates that women should stay in the work force in some capacity because if you don't your earning potential is greatly diminished should something happen in the relationship.

My ex MIL is another story. She worked for a few years before she had kids and after the youngest was in high school had a couple little part time jobs but nothing you could call a career. When the kids came along they became her entire life. She went to church and took care of the kids. That is all the woman did. Now that the kids are all grown adults she doesn't know what to do with herself. She doesn't have hobbies, her kids were her hobby. She doesn't have interests, her kids were her interests. All she does is go to church on Sunday, sit on the couch all day and watch Fox news and try to guilt the kids into coming for a visit. It's very sad.

 

[MrsPete]

Each marriage and each divorce is so unique that I don't think it's possible to set one fair ironclad rule for or against alimony.

I agree. Laws are a good thing, but individual situations are why we have judges to arbitrate.

In theory, both husband and wife have had a career and should be able to take care of themselves financially; however, the reality is often that one person has "sacraficed" her career (I say her 'cause that's usually the case, and I'm making no attempt at political correctness) for his. This might mean having stayed home with kids, having passed up promotions, or having moved /given up her job for the sake of his. IF the family dynamics are such that one person has sacraficed career for the good of the family, then it's only fair that everything is divided equally.

In reality, if I were in this situation, I think I'd rather have a one-time settlement. Clearly, two people who are divorcing cannot get along. Why wouldn't it be better to have the money NOW so that you can invest it and be responsible for it yourself? It would diminish the need for further contact with a person who is toxic to you.

 

[SLP958]

So a woman who gave up significant earning potential to stay at home and by doing so enabled her husband to increase his income should be left with only the minimum wage level jobs she qualifies for after an extended absence from the workforce while he retains all of the benefits earned by the mutually beneficial arrangement of their married years? Alimony should only cover the time it takes her to find a job, and so what if that job leaves her living in poverty unable to make ends meet?

Like it or not, this is one of the consequences of making the choice to leave the work force. Life is not fair and it does happen.

My aunt is one of these cases. She has a degree in teaching but stayed at home with children for 20 years. She was married to a doctor, enter on expensive vacations, tennis clubs etc. He left her for a 25 year old. She was given a settlement but still needs/wants additional income.
She can not go back to teaching as she never kept up her requirements and is not qualified for most jobs.
She now tells her 3 college age daughters that the biggest mistake she ever made was to stop working. She has told th over and over to never give up thief ability to support themselves.

Again, just because a couple makes the decision while married does mean things won't change if the marriage ends. Fairness has little to do with it.

 

[tasha99]

Like it or not, this is one of the consequences of making the choice to leave the work force. Life is not fair and it does happen.

My aunt is one of these cases. She has a degree in teaching but stayed at home with children for 20 years. She was married to a doctor, enter on expensive vacations, tennis clubs etc. He left her for a 25 year old. She was given a settlement but still needs/wants additional income.
She can not go back to teaching as she never kept up her requirements and is not qualified for most jobs.
She now tells her 3 college age daughters that the biggest mistake she ever made was to stop working. She has told th over and over to never give up thief ability to support themselves.

Again, just because a couple makes the decision while married does mean things won't change if the marriage ends. Fairness has little to do with it.

Fairness has everything to do with it. It's why spousal support still exists.

 

[Happy 2 B Me]

I think of Alimony as being paid back wages. The stay at home parent works 24 hours a day. I understand that we sleep part of that time. Night time is the on call time when the children get sick, have bad dreams, night feedings, or just do not want to sleep. The working, outside the home, parents enjoys turning over in the warm comfy bed and returning to sleep.

In reality the parent that has to pay alimony should make sure they tell the new potential spouse that they will need to work to ensure there is enough money to go around as part of his/hers will be going to the first family as child support and to wife as alimony. I wonder how many girl friends/boy friends would stick around?

I love the saying "water your side of the fence so the other side does not look greener". My daughter and son-in-law still hold hands after 10+ years together. They realize the marriage comes first because with out it there is no "family".

I vote for staying together and living by the vows you said you would honor when you married.

 

[Lolsmum]

I do agree I took a risk when I left the workforce to be a SAHM. I also took one when I married him and moved to the UK from the US to be with him. I took one when I made a child, and then another, with him.

If I had been living with divorce in the back of my mind the whole time, I wouldn't have taken any of those risks and we would not be a family now. After moving to another country and having children together, really the risk of staying at home seemed fairly small.

 

[Lolsmum]

I think of Alimony as being paid back wages. The stay at home parent works 24 hours a day. I understand that we sleep part of that time. Night time is the on call time when the children get sick, have bad dreams, night feedings, or just do not want to sleep. The working, outside the home, parents enjoys turning over in the warm comfy bed and returning to sleep.

In reality the parent that has to pay alimony should make sure they tell the new potential spouse that they will need to work to ensure there is enough money to go around as part of his/hers will be going to the first family as child support and to wife as alimony. I wonder how many girl friends/boy friends would stick around?

I love the saying "water your side of the fence so the other side does not look greener". My daughter and son-in-law still hold hands after 10+ years together. They realize the marriage comes first because with out it there is no "family".

I vote for staying together and living by the vows you said you would honor when you married.

Is holding hands after 10+ years together unusual? My husband and I have been married for 16 years, together for 2 years before that. We still hold hands, unless we are holding the kids' hands. Maybe that being unusual explains the divorce rate.

 

[jrmasm]

I think of Alimony as being paid back wages. The stay at home parent works 24 hours a day. I understand that we sleep part of that time. Night time is the on call time when the children get sick, have bad dreams, night feedings, or just do not want to sleep. The working, outside the home, parents enjoys turning over in the warm comfy bed and returning to sleep.

What are you talking about? If both parents work, they ignore their kids if they get up in the middle of the night? Or the children of working parents are just better trained?

 

[SLP958]

I think of Alimony as being paid back wages. The stay at home parent works 24 hours a day. I understand that we sleep part of that time. Night time is the on call time when the children get sick, have bad dreams, night feedings, or just do not want to sleep. The working, outside the home, parents enjoys turning over in the warm comfy bed and returning to sleep.

In reality the parent that has to pay alimony should make sure they tell the new potential spouse that they will need to work to ensure there is enough money to go around as part of his/hers will be going to the first family as child support and to wife as alimony. I wonder how many girl friends/boy friends would stick around?

I love the saying "water your side of the fence so the other side does not look greener". My daughter and son-in-law still hold hands after 10+ years together. They realize the marriage comes first because with out it there is no "family".

I vote for staying together and living by the vows you said you would honor when you married.

Where did you get the idea working parents sleep all night? We are on call 24/7 also. Was up until midnight with a sick little one last night.

That is a crazy assumption. Do you think we are sleeping at work???

 

[HelenePA]

Where did you get the idea working parents sleep all night? We are on call 24/7 also. Was up until midnight with a sick little one last night.

That is a crazy assumption. Do you think we are sleeping at work???

My husband sleeps all night and NEVER got up for a feeding/diaper change/ when the kids were (are) sick with them call.. its all me.

 

[AntePrincess]

What are you talking about? If both parents work, they ignore their kids if they get up in the middle of the night? Or the children of working parents are just better trained?

Where did you get the idea working parents sleep all night? We are on call 24/7 also. Was up until midnight with a sick little one last night.

That is a crazy assumption. Do you think we are sleeping at work???

I think the only thing she was saying was that SHE, the SAHP, was the one on call at night, which helped her husband out at work in the morning because he had a good night's rest.

 

[Lolsmum]

I think the only thing she was saying was that SHE, the SAHP, was the one on call at night, which helped her husband out at work in the morning because he had a good night's rest.

That was how I read it, but maybe that's because I'm a SAHM and always on call at night. We finally negotiated me having Friday nights off recently but I went over 5 years being the one on call all night.

 

[SLP958]

I think the only thing she was saying was that SHE, the SAHP, was the one on call at night, which helped her husband out at work in the morning because he had a good night's rest.

Oh, got it.

Still sounds silly to me though. I am looking at it as someone who does the getting up at night and still goes to work the next day.

My husband commutes so I always do the night stuff.

 

[Colleen27]

This line of reasoning is so appalling, but I've seen it a lot of times. It's one of the reasons I've always worked except for about a 2 year stint when we moved.

I don't know what world people are living in where a woman who has been home for 20 years can remotely step into the workforce and make a living wage. People have a total disconnect from reality here. And yet everybody wants women to stay home with their kids when they are young.

It's such a double standard.

Divorce is expensive. And a husband (or a wife) who wants out of a marriage where one person has been a SAP should be prepared to pay.

I agree. The anti-alimony sentiment generally comes from two camps, in my experience - men who don't want to pay and people who don't see any reason any able-bodied person should have an extended absence from the workforce. The latter are at least consistent but I think there's a lot of hypocrisy among the former... They want the benefits of a partner that stays at home but don't want any responsibility for the long-term consequences of that choice if the relationship dissolves.

Onto the topic at hand. While being a SAHP is the best situation for some families I think people are naive in thinking it doesn't come with certain risks. The most obvious being what happens in the event of a divorce as discussed here. A lot of times the SAHP is faced with more drastic changes than the working parent is and is forced to try to find a job that will likely pay bupkis because they have been out of the workforce for however many years. It's a sad situation but that's the way it is. If a couple decides one of them will become a SAHP they should both realize that that is going to drastically affect the SAHP's earning potential in the event of a divorce.

I don't think anyone is saying there aren't risks. Alimony isn't able or intended to completely negate any financial impact of a divorce - no matter what the breadwinner earns no order will be high enough to recreate the standard of living the couple enjoyed as an intact household. What it does is mitigate the risk, both to lessen the impact on the SAH spouse (and by extension any minor children, since the kids usually continue to live with the primary caregiver) and to attempt to lessen the social costs of divorce (in terms of public assistance, poverty rates, etc).

 

[Colleen27]

Where did you get the idea working parents sleep all night? We are on call 24/7 also. Was up until midnight with a sick little one last night.

That is a crazy assumption. Do you think we are sleeping at work???

I think the assumption is that if both parents are working, both parents are also sharing the childcare and household responsibilities. I know that isn't always how it works, though. Even when I was working I was the primary parent and the one always on night duty, because my hours were shorter and more predictable than my husband's and because his job entails a great deal of driving and working with potentially dangerous tools & machinery so it never felt right to have him share in the sleep deprivation.

 

[dogluva]

I think of Alimony as being paid back wages. The stay at home parent works 24 hours a day. I understand that we sleep part of that time. Night time is the on call time when the children get sick, have bad dreams, night feedings, or just do not want to sleep. The working, outside the home, parents enjoys turning over in the warm comfy bed and returning to sleep.

In reality the parent that has to pay alimony should make sure they tell the new potential spouse that they will need to work to ensure there is enough money to go around as part of his/hers will be going to the first family as child support and to wife as alimony. I wonder how many girl friends/boy friends would stick around?

I love the saying "water your side of the fence so the other side does not look greener". My daughter and son-in-law still hold hands after 10+ years together. They realize the marriage comes first because with out it there is no "family".

I vote for staying together and living by the vows you said you would honor when you married.

I don't roll over and go back to sleep. Why are working parents allowed to do that and if they are, I did not get the memo, I am very confused about the 24 hour thing too. Whe I get home from "work" I keep working as a parent so I guess it's fair to say I work 24 hours a day as well.

 

[TheIncredibles!]

Is holding hands after 10+ years together unusual? My husband and I have been married for 16 years, together for 2 years before that. We still hold hands, unless we are holding the kids' hands. Maybe that being unusual explains the divorce rate.

Married 17 years and together 21. Still holding hands here. Most nights we fall asleep holding hands.

 

[TheIncredibles!]

I don't roll over and go back to sleep. Why are working parents allowed to do that and if they are, I did not get the memo, I am very confused about the 24 hour thing too. Whe I get home from "work" I keep working as a parent so I guess it's fair to say I work 24 hours a day as well.

Agreed. My husband does not come home and put his feet up and sit on the couch while I gather him a cocktail and get dinner ready.

I don't get the whole "back pay" thing either. Being a SAHP means you are not earning money period. While you are not earning money the other parent is paying for the expenses for the family. If somebody wants to think they are getting paid then they can claim the cost of half of the living expenses and half of their savings as their "pay".

Now having said that... I am not against alimony. It should be on a case by case basis depending on the earning potential of both spouses, the ages of their children and the past choices they made together as a family.

 

[Lolsmum]

I was largely joking when I referred to it as back pay, but really I think that's a reasonable way to see it for those who have a huge issue with alimony. If I had been working, we would have paid someone else to do what I do, and that someone else would have reaped the benefits of payments into the state pension system too. Funnily enough, most SAHPs have virtually no pension to speak of after years of work simply because the family chooses to save on the expense of paying somebody to do the job that must be done. If it is reasonable to pay someone else to do it, it's not unreasonable to consider it worth something of value to the family when the SAHP does it.