Gman said:

I agree that this alimony thing is taken too far. It is far more equitable for women to get divorced than to stay married. All the financial perks of two incomes, none of the left-up-toilet-seat.

I say women benefit from this because where I am from 70% of all divorces are initiated by the female. Of those 70% approximately 98% state “Not being happy anymore” as the reason. Wow! I’m not happy at my job, can I leave and still get 50% of my salary? That would be awesome! Why wouldn’t I do that?

I now subscribe to the Gene Simmons school of thought on marriage. Worst business deal a man can make.

Rachel said:

I thought this was funny and fits in perfectly….

One day a father gets out of work and on his way home he remembers that it’s his daughter’s birthday. He pulls over to a toy store and asks the salesperson, “How much is the Barbie on the display window?”

The salesperson answers, ” Which one? We have Work out Barbie for $19.95,Shopping Barbie for $19.95,Beach Barbie for $19.95,Disco Barbie for $19.95 and Divorced Barbie for $265.95

The amazed father asks: “What? Why is the Divorced Barbie $265.95 and the others only $19.95?”

The salesperson annoyingly answers :
“Sir…,”Divorced Barbie comes with Ken’s Car,Ken’s House,Ken’s Boat,Ken’s Furniture,Ken’s Computer and… One of Ken’s Friends.”

Gary said:

Well, many years ago, most states DID have fault divorce. Of course, that’s when a person behavior during their marriage is grounds for divorce and did affect the outcome of the settlement and alimony ( called spousal support in CA. ) But I noticed with the emergence of womens lib and the NOW organization, most states started dropping “fault” divorce for “no-fault” divorce. Did those two go hand in hand or was it a mere coincidence? I do not know. You decide. But now we know this. More women file for divorce than men. It is usually the woman who gets paid alimony. It is usually the woman who gets custody of the children. IMO, most divorce courts and laws are gender biased. My attorney told me it is better than it was yrs. ago when he started practicing family law. I understand the fairness in granting alimony to a spouse that hadn’t worked and was unprepared to do so. But my ex quit a good paying job and never returned to work, expecting instead to receive alimony, which she did get. It took nearly two yrs. to get that ruling changed, thanks in part to an over-worked court system, and a gender biased one at that. Too many “judges/commissioners” today are still gender biased. It’s not surprising, considering all the male bashing that takes place in the media, mostly television.

Sara said:

These are great comments, but I have to share a story of mine. Years ago I was running a small private school. The people involved were all very wealthy. One of the little girls was the daughter of parents who were going through a nasty and I mean NASTY divorce. The husband had all the money; the wife had multiple degrees and had once worked for Pres. Reagan but had given it all up to have kids. At 50 she hadn’t worked in some 20 years and was basically not employable – at least not to a degree to support 4 kids. The man spent 300K and dragged the divorce out for years trying to keep her from getting a penny. She would tell me how the trouble in California is that the law was so unfair to men for so long that it has gone to the other extreme. Despite the fact that he was physically and verbally abusive to both her and one of the kids – and this was documented with police – the courts bent over backwards for 3 years listening to his demands (and his $600/hr lawyer) that he deserved equal custody and she didn’t deserve a cent. The whole time I saw this little girl utterly devastated. At 9 years old she became anorexic; it’s actually a special type of anorexia common among abused kids called FTT (Failure to Thrive). They are grasping for *anything* they might control, and food is it. To be honest, while I felt incredible compassion for the child, I didn’t listen to either parent’s stories…until the dad started calling me and harrassing me out of the blue, and wanting to tell me all about his side of the divorce. He was truly a scary, narcissistic, abusive megalomaniac. I had to threaten a restraining order and go to court just to get him to stop calling me to talk about his personal life. He even called me drunk! Still, the courts ultimately gave him 50% custody and she got a tiny alimony settlement and they had to sell the house the kids had grown up in. She works retail because she can’t get a decent job in law (she was a lawyer but if you don’t get on the partner track you’re not going to be hireable at 50). The grandparents help out. She was an utterly devastated and abused woman. But as she explained, because she could only afford a $200/hr lawyer and he could afford the $600/hr lawyer, he won.

My boyfriend forks over half his earnings – not to mention the house, car, etc – to his ex, which I think it completely unfair, but I guess my point is that divorce isn’t always bad on the man. Sometimes it’s bad on the woman, too.

Gman said:

I think it would be interesting to look at some statistics on the man vs. woman issue. I suspect that for every man that pulls off a stunt like Sara talked about, there are at least 10 women doing the same thing. In my particular case, I was paying for a high-priced lawyer to just allow me to be able to see my son, while she was using a legal-aid lawyer. We both had the same income, only somehow I wasn’t able to get legal aid since I was a man. Since her legal-aid lawyer was looking to make a name for himself, he went all out. Which, in turn, forced me to pay for my lawyer to go all out.
What was spent on ensuring I get to see my son, would have sent him to college for 2 years.
Remember she was the one that filed for divorce on the not-happy basis. I filed under the mental cruelty. Since I had to flee to another province, her filing was the one that was accepted.