Thoughts of marriage

[SilverFalcon92]

My thoughts about marriage are kind of scary. I have been hearing that people (especially men) who get married don’t turn out well. I heard that some women will divorce their spouse, and they can take off of everything that the husband owns, alimony. Now I know there’s something that calls a prenup where they can’t take anything once their divorce it’s over, but I heard that it can get thrown out of court, and they can say you force her to sign the papers and all of that. I’m not saying all women have bad intentions and I know not all won’t do that to me. I find marriage to be scary, especially if you don’t know their intentions, which freaks the fuck out of me, and I’m glad I don’t need to get married through the court system. So what’s your opinion on marriage? Is it a bad thing or not? I hope my post doesn’t upset anybody, anyway.

[Latha]

Hello SilverFalcon92,

I'm not an expert on the law, but to my understanding, alimony is not about taking all the money that another person has. Rather, it is a payment that is made during or after a divorce or separation when one partner earns less than another. This is because courts recognize that a marriage is a partnership, and the gains made during the marriage belong to both partners.

When courts order alimony payments, they consider how much money the person receiving those payments actually needs, and whether they can find higher paying work to support themselves. And this provision is gender-neutral, by the way. That means that when a husband earns less than his wife, he can apply for alimony in a separation.

Would you say this seems like a fair system?

I'm curious, where have you heard these narratives about alimony? I'm tempted to ask some questions about them. Why does the husband have all the money in these stories? If wives are the ones applying for alimony, that means they earn less than their husbands. Why does that pattern exist?

It would be scary if you had to marry someone who you don't know and whose intentions you can't judge. But by the time you are thinking about marriage with another person, I think you should know and trust them well enough to feel sure that they would not go out of their way to hurt you. Does that feel possible/reasonable to you?

[SilverFalcon92]

Thank you for responding to my message. About the alimony thing I didn’t know that the husband can get money from the wife if the wife makes more money. I been hearing that wife are normally the one that are getting the money from the husband. To be in my opinion I don’t think neither should be forces to give money to that partner technically they aren’t together anymore and especially if it ended badly and they don’t want nothing to do with each other. All I heard was marriages is bad because they can take half of your things away and you’ll regret in the long run. I agree that I should know the person very well so I won’t have to go through a bad divorce.

[Latha]

Hi there, SilverFalcon92

There is so much that could be said about the gendered differences in the outcomes people have from marriage and separation. I'm really not an expert, but I do have a few thoughts:

It is true that alimony is awarded more often to wives than to husbands. That is because, in relationships between men and women, wives often earn less than their husbands, both due to expectations that they will take on more of any housework and childcare (sacrificing their careers) along with discrimination that women can face through their education and in the workplace.

For many heterosexual couples, the fact that women usually take on more domestic labor is part of what allows their husbands to work jobs where they earn more, while also having the benefits of their wife's work at home. If wives in these situations didn't do housework and childcare, husbands would have to do it themselves (cutting into their ability to work outside the home) or pay to outsource that work to someone else.

So, let's say we're thinking of marriage as a partnership, where the gains made during the relationship are the result of the work of both members, and thus belong to both. What should we do when they separate, and one partner has more wealth than the other? Would it be fair for them to keep all of it? The answer we've developed legally for these questions is alimony.

Alimony can be an ongoing payment, or a one-time thing. When judges award alimony, they are meant to consider a ton of factors, including whether the partner being awarded has the ability to support themselves--that is in fact the preferred outcome. This means that the person being given alimony does not take necessarily take half of what the other person owns, never mind all of it.

I think it is interesting that the narrative you've heard says that men are especially likely to fare badly in marriage and divorce, because it seems like we have a lot of data that says differently. Getting married is associated with better health and longevity for men, and during divorces, women are more likely to suffer economically, because they are usually the partner who has less financially security in the first place. (Once again, there is so much nuance in why that is, but for the purposes of this discussion, I think the fact remains.)

Given all this, how do you feel about marriage and divorce? Do you have any thoughts or questions?