Not one of your downvoters, but some discussion: many countries used to have the concept of a guilty party in divorces and only abandoned it after a considerable buildup of painful experience. Divorces don't get less ugly when you force the judge to pick a winner.

On the flip side, in England and Wales there's no such thing as a 'no fault divorce', which is crazy.

Typically assets are split evenly and that's it - unless children are involved.

Haven't downvoted, but I'll discuss it if you're still around.

Seeing it as being about breadwinner at all is, to my mind, rather beside the point. If a partner hasn't worked in years, they are dependent on the working partner's income.

Alimony isn't usually unlimited and exists in principle (and often in practice) to support the dependent partner until their financial situation is resolved. The alternative would be state support, not nothing. There's no mechanism in a modern state to leave someone without financial support (although there are substantial failures in practice).

Having taxpayers pay for things that can be arranged privately is generally avoided, and given that people are in broad strokes aware of alimony laws, they've tacitly agreed to such support by marrying.

So I suppose I'd ask what you'd propose as an alternative system?

So if a man has an affair with his secretary, the wife can kick him out and claim all the combined assets and income for the rest of time?

That would be an improvement over the current situation, yes.

Ideally, joint assets remain joint and there are no claims against future income.

Except where there are kids involved this is almost entirely the case in the UK so I struggle to see the reality of a world that's different.

I guess it's rather unfair to the stay-at-home husband though, who's given up his career to look after the kids, and thus has lost 10 years of continual work and training out of the job market. When income differences are extreme (say wife on $150ka a year and husband having given up a high paying profession 10 years earlier), it would make sense for the husband to get a 'get back on your feet' sort of stipend.