Why not work? After some time in divorce (immediately perhaps) you are supposed, as an adult, to support for yourself.

Especially considering you're going to send children into their own lives by 50, and retirement is only coming at 65. You definitely look forward for 15 years of work even if you are absolutely devoted to raising kids.

> if you don't have goals, interests and earned income of your own

But we can only put the very latter in alimony. Can't put goals there.

Let's say as a family you decided that the wife would be a stay at home wife to have and support children. Then fifteen years down the line you get divorced.

The wife gave up fifteen years of career and career advancement for the family. Alimony is a damn appropriate compensation for that sacrifice, since it's likely that as you start working you're going to be getting minimum wage (and your ex husband, presumably, had those fifteen years of career advancement).

Was career a sacrifice or something that she was happy to get rid of in exchange to support?

I think I can find men who would be happy to do chores if a woman would be supporting them with high-paying job, and essentially zero women who will agree to such arrangement.

Staying at home without working is a bad decision and you certainly can't chain man over it when it doesn't work. Promising of life-time alimony, in some extreme cases for a wife who never had any children even, is just pushing women into making this bad decision.

Does not really matter what sort of words you want to call it. She still gave up her earning potential for the family. These decisions are made by two people, not one. And now, as a result of that, in divorce, they are woefully uneven going forward. Alimony is there to balance those scales. Don't like it? Don't have a stay at home family.

> I think I can find men who would be happy to do chores if a woman would be supporting them with high-paying job, and essentially zero women who will agree to such arrangement.

My friend group alone includes one planned stay at home husband, so you are quite incorrect on this point.

> Staying at home without working is a bad decision

Then don't do it.

> and you certainly can't chain man over it when it doesn't work.

Why all the concern for the man here and none for the woman? She's "chained" to lower earnings for the rest of her life as a result of this.

But they are affecting one of those people more than the other. So they should factor it in.

There should be implicit thinking "if we get separated later in life, then what?"

> Don't like it? Don't have a stay at home family.

I have no trust that alimony will only be applied to stay at home mothers, and not extended to any women with any earning capability.

And that is a trust issue right there that is damaging marriage as an institution.

But we can only put the very latter in alimony. Can't put goals there.

If you got married and started a family because raising a family was a goal, alimony is related to that. Women have historically been provided for by husbands. For women, marriage has historically been a viable alternative to getting a job.

It isn't like buying a lottery ticket. Being a wife and mom involves a great deal of work. Raising kids well is a goal. Once they are raised, women need to find other things to do.

This seems to be lost on a great many men. Even women seem to often not see it. But it is a reality.

I hope you know that women were also historically accompanied by dowry? Just the woman herself, with her raising a family, was not considered sufficient offering to match the groom.

If you hope to find a husband that would provide you towards the end of your life, you should (a) choose very carefully, and (b) have solid understanding of your own contribution. Otherwise, once your husband decides he doesn't want to spend the rest of life with you, it falls apart.

There's no doubt why alimony should be paid to support underage children. There's no reason why alimony should be paid to support an adult, a healthy woman of working age.

B) I spent two decades supporting my husband's career. When we divorced, he still had a well paid job and twenty years work experience. I was starting over from scratch and was "lucky" to get a better-than-minimum-wage job to start.

It aggravates me that the world as a whole acts like having kids and raising them is only a financial cost to men. The fact that women give birth and then take more time off for family responsibilities helps suppress the incomes of most women. Then people don't act like this is a real cost to them.

Furthermore, if you just don't want children at all, there are several viable solutions:

1) Remain celibate

2) Get a vasectomy

3) Have only homosexual sex

A lot of men seem to desire sex with women, who can then have their entire life derailed due to an unexpected pregnancy, even if they use birth control, which is not 100% reliable. And then they act like women are just overentitled and lazy for wanting compensation for the very real cost to themselves.

I'm a woman. I like sex with men. I have been celibate for more than 12 years for medical reasons. The difficulty involved in finding a man who is not just cavalierly willing to ruin my life for his convenience and then walk away makes me wonder if I will ever get laid again. That whole "sleeping with me will destroy your entire future" vibe is a distinct turn off for me.

This is a weasel right here. You claim you did something, but never specify what.

Indeed, successful women are not lining for men who will "support their careers" for a chunk of income.

I want children and I have, with a responsible woman who is a self-sufficient person herself. That's what makes marriage work. Not the good intentions, but objective and subjective value of spouses to each other.

Your comment comes awfully close to a personal attack. Given that you have a successful two career couple arrangement, I fail to comprehend the hostility. Your ability to make it work in no way negates the very real challenges involved in establishing a two career couple and also having children. Most people find that having one spouse with a serious career and one spouse who may work, but whose career takes a back seat to family needs, is simply much more viable.

I also have special needs kids and other personal burdens that complicated the situation. Not everyone has a situation that makes a two career couple a viable option. I wanted a career. It didn't happen. I have done a lot of reading to try to figure out where my life went wrong and how to fix it. I expected to have a career. Other people expected me to have a career and make good money. Life does not always go as we expect.

In most jurisdictions, child support is more than the cost of raising a child. In Canada, equalizing incomes was the goal of the latest round of child support guidelines, not "support for the child".

For a US reference, see http://www.divorcecorp.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/The-Ec...

> I spent two decades supporting my husband's career. When we divorced, he still had a well paid job and twenty years work experience. I was starting over from scratch and was "lucky" to get a better-than-minimum-wage job to start.

And you should get compensated for that. The question is really how much, and how long.

> It aggravates me that the world as a whole acts like having kids and raising them is only a financial cost to men.

In some sense, it is. See research on the wage gap going back to the 1960's. Never-married childless women earn about the same as never-married childless men.

Once people get married and have kids, men take on additional work to pay for their kids. Women take on less work to take care of their kids.

This means men have higher "out of pocket" costs than women do. But women pay the "opportunity cost" of raising kids. Hence alimony.

> if you just don't want children at all, there are several viable solutions:

None of those are truly viable. They're necessary conditions to not having kids. But not sufficient.

In practice, a women can name any man as the father if she wants. No paternity test is necessary in most jurisdictions, and such tests are illegal in parts of Europe! In some states, if the father is notified of such a child and doesn't contest it within 30 days, he's determined to be the father, and has no right to fight it after that.

See any number of cases where men are paying for kids they didn't even know existed, who DNA proves aren't theirs.

The guy doesn't even have to have sex with her. If your girlfriend's room-mate sneaks into the room at night, grabs the used condom, and impregnates herself, well, as the man, you pay for 18 years. No choice, or you go to jail.

> That whole "sleeping with me will destroy your entire future" vibe is a distinct turn off for me.

As it is for men. The reality is that women hold essentially all control over reproduction. Women can choose to get pregnant, and can force any man to pay for their choices, for the next 18 years. At the threat of jail, losing jobs, passport, drivers license, etc.

It is entirely rational to be wary of such side-effects.

The point here is that while your choices have cost you, men don't have some magical happy land of money, cigars, whisky, and bro-hugs. There are costs and benefits to the choices made by both sexes.

Women take on more work too, it is just not paid work. Mothers, whether they have a paid job or not, tend to be chronically short of sleep. Full time moms spend about 60 hours per week on household chores. Working moms spend about 40 hours per week.

I am aware that there are two sides to this story and men have their own concerns. But, the open hostility towards women you are displaying is something I felt a need to give a little pushback to. This is an overwhelmingly male forum. Such comments are often wildly upvoted and cheered on. It does not help bridge the gap. It just deepens the "war of the sexes."

But, I should probably disengage. Your pattern of comments here looks pretty toxic to me. Probably no good will come of engaging you further.

Well, yes. I did say "take care of their kids".

As for paid vs unpaid work, see:: http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?queryid=54757

In most western countries, men and women do roughly the same amount of total work. For men, more paid than unpaid. For women, the other way around.

So again, just focussing on "women have it bad" misses a big part of the picture.

> I am aware that there are two sides to this story and men have their own concerns

Apparently not.

> But, the open hostility towards women you are displaying ...

is a self-serving lie.

> Your pattern of comments here looks pretty toxic to me

I acknowledge your position, agree that you deserve alimony, express caution that showing one side of the picture isn't a good approach, and show how the choices men and women make each have their pros and cons.

You show one side of the story, and express shock and outrage that someone dare bring up the other side.

And then you call me hostile and toxic?

Please, that's just pathetic.

Well, yes. I did say "take care of their kids".

This is what you originally said:

Once people get married and have kids, men take on additional work to pay for their kids. Women take on less work to take care of their kids.

You did not say that women do less paid work. You said they take on less work. This framing implicitly suggests that women's work isn't really work. This seems to be a common societal default assumption and that deeply held belief helps drive the feminization of poverty because the mental model is that women's work isn't real work and doesn't really deserve compensation.

The rest of your comment is simply gratuitously ugly, so I am done here.

> Once people get married and have kids, men take on additional work to pay for their kids.

You now claim:

> I also did not say that MEN do more paid work.

???

Pointing out that such interpretations are twisted is redundant.

Yes, I know they're twisted. That was the point FFS.

I'll also note you don't seem to have a problem with her twisted interpretation of things. Which is the hypocrisy I was trying to point out.

I mean honestly... read this quote:

Once people get married and have kids, men take on additional work to pay for their kids. Women take on less work to take care of their kids.

and try to explain how any rational person would conclude I was somehow nefariously assuming that women were not doing paid work.

In some cultures. In some cultures, the groom (or his family) paid her family a bride price, and in some cultures the groom paid her (personally, not her family) a dower. In some cultures, in fact, a combination of these existed simultaneously.

Of course, pretending that dowry alone was the dominant tradition is necessary to your argument that what the wife brought was viewed as insufficient value on its own, but it's not actually accurate.

Should it?

I mean, let's say we have a happy "leave it beaver" family with 2.2 kids, a white picket fence, a dad who works, and a mom who doesn't. Due to no fault in particular, they get divorced. They now have two households to maintain instead of one.

Why would both people deserve a "middle class lifestyle"? Their expenses have each gone up, and the total income hasn't changed. How can you split one "middle class lifestyle" into two, and obtain two of the same thing?

Comments like yours are essentially twisting my intent to an extreme degree. I did not expect to have people pile on and act like I am some overentitled lazy bum for explaining some of my reasons why I also work, in addition to getting alimony. Geez.

Edit: It appears you are that someone. So, which is it? Alimony is a cushy free ride? Or not?

... if she wants to maintain the same lifestyle. If she's willing to take on a lower standard of living, perhaps not.

> Comments like yours are essentially twisting my intent to an extreme degree.

That's just untrue.

> I did not expect to have people pile on and act like I am some overentitled lazy bum

I did no such thing.

> Edit: It appears you are that someone.

Nope. You're not reading my comments. I clearly said that alimony is deserved compensation.

I understand your frustration that people are taking a somewhat counter position. But the point here is to not blame you or to say you "deserve" to be poor.

The point is to have a discussion on responsibility. Why are people being compensated? How much should they be compensated? For how long should that be paid?

For me, if you're married for 2 years, and pay alimony for 50, that's abusive and wrong. Saying so shouldn't be interpreted as an attack on you personally.

Please learn to distinguish a discussion on the topic of alimony from a personal attack on you. There are absolutely not the same thing.