UNPOPULAR INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE, UGLY DIVORCE, SPOUSAL SUPPORT GOLDDIGGER-ISM
While everyone is talking about all kinds of reforms and changes in the law, ranging from labor law to the criminal justice system, none dares to raise the issue of family law reforms, especially when it comes to spousal support, especially in the community property states. Somehow there is no activist movement behind a push to get rid of spousal support even though there are always just as many “victims” of spousal support as there are beneficiaries of it!
BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CURRENT SYSTEM OF COMMUNITY PROPERTY LAWS AND SPOUSAL SUPPORT RATIONALE
In California, we inherited community property law from Spanish colonial times. Ama de la casa had to be protected somehow if something happened to the husband-wife relationship because Ama de la Casa (housewife) didn’t have any life or career outside of the household and, if abandoned by her husband, had no means to survive on her own. In 1848 when Mexico suffered a humiliating defeat in the war with the U.S., California became part of the U.S., pursuant to the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Despite subsequent disrespect for the rights of Mexican landowners, local American authorities nevertheless chose to preserve Mexican community property laws guaranteeing a 50/50 split of the community property that belongs to husband and wife. Community property laws guaranteed a 50/50 split of any property acquired by either spouse during marriage and in addition, provided the family court with the power to award spousal support to the less affluent spouse, who would presumably be left poor and destitute upon divorce. This was all conditional upon who was at fault for separation and divorce. Adultery and overall spousal conduct mattered in awarding spousal support and for the division of property. In the later part of the 20th century, the California Family Law Act established a no-fault divorce provision that eliminated the need for either spouse to show who was at fault for divorce to be able to qualify for spousal support and 50/50 property division.
Judges would still look at spousal conduct, but to a much lesser degree, and in deciding whether to award spousal support, they would focus more on domestic abuse than on infidelity and other such intimate matters. As our society grew more modern and mature, it understood that the determining fault for divorce involves such complex psychological and moral issues that outsiders such as court or attorneys, could not even come close to fair understanding of who really was at fault.
From the 1970s and until the present, the emphasis shifted to economic disparity between spouses upon separation and divorce. At the same time, women were increasingly giving up family values in favor of personal and career growth – in part because of women’s rights and feminist movements, but in part also because men likewise chose personal freedom over traditional values. Starting in the 1970s divorce became so common that according to some sociological data, 50% of marriages end in divorce.
Family courts increasingly became forums for wealth redistribution disputes between spouses, especially after long-term marriage. Many of these disputes resulted in major wealth transfers from a more affluent spouse to a less affluent one and the award of hefty spousal support payments for lengthy periods of time. Despite the growing financial security of women, most of these divorce outcomes disproportionately affected men who lost houses, investment properties, and businesses to their ex-wives, and on top of this were required to pay spousal support for years to come.
PRE-NUPTIAL AGREEMENTS AND MANIPULATION TO EVADE UNFAIR SPOUSAL SUPPORT SYSTEM
Even pre–nuptial agreements rarely worked because many judges found them “unconscionable” even if the wife agreed in writing that she would get little or nothing upon divorce. There were many violations of due process for pre-nuptial agreements related to the husband trying to fool his future wife into giving up her rights by making sure she doesn’t understand the agreement, doesn’t hire her own independent counsel, doesn’t get a translation of the agreement if she is an immigrant or doesn’t get enough time to read and understand it. These cheap tricks in trying to evade the application of unfair laws normally backfired when during divorce wife’s lawyer would expose deceptive behavior by the husband in overreaching to make wife sign pre-nuptial agreement. In cases like these, the judge would punish the husband by throwing out the prenup and still forcing 50/50 property division and awarding draconian spousal support.
What wouldn’t divorced spouses do to make each other’s lives miserable? They would threaten to take away custody if they couldn’t get big money from the more affluent spouse, they would engage in bitter custody battles, they would fraudulently transfer property to relatives, they would hide their income to pretend like they don’t work to get spousal support award, there is whole Machiavellian divorce science of how to get money from your ex and how to prevent your ex from getting your money.
WHY SPOUSAL SUPPORT IS MORALLY REPREHENSIBLE
The most morally reprehensible, however, is the very principle that one spouse is forced to pay something to or share something of value with a person they used to love, but now passionately hate and that the former object of love and care who now hates you may be entitled to keep getting money from you for many years to come. Generally being forced to share something of value with someone you hate or don’t care about is morally reprehensible.
While relationship is good, its natural to support one another financially, to share everything but even then there should always be some privacy zone for each spouse, separate bank accounts and separate money that spouses are free to spend on their personal needs without sharing or even disclosing to each other what they spend their personal money on. This allows for independence and private space for both spouses and actually helps cement a fair, stable and strong marriage.
When relationship is no longer working regardless of whose “fault” it is, there should be a clean financial separation where spouses should come out of the marriage only with the money they ve earned or contributed to community property and debts should be paid only by those who benefited from them .
All agreements for wealth redistribution upon divorce should be voluntary not forced by the court. In many cases more affluent spouse feels guilty for cheating on less affluent one and wants the less affluent spouse to be financially secure and wants to give them something voluntarily – either a car or a house or some amount of money. This is OK, but when the government and courts get involved in IMPOSING spousal support award by force to a less affluent spouse things turn really ugly.
WHY ARGUMENT IN FAVOR OF SPOUSAL SUPPORT BASED ON SACRIFICIAL DEDICATION TO THE FAMILY IS WEAK
There is a weak argument that in some cases housewives still give up their career opportunities to raise children and take care of the household, and after 20 year of marriage should therefore be entitled to spousal support by more affluent husband because of all this sacrifice.
This argument could only hold water if the husband made wife detrimentally rely on his promise to always financially support the wife and they made an explicit agreement about it that in exchange for his permanent commitment of providing financial support, she is sacrificing her very promising career.
However, in many instances, she had nothing to sacrifice to begin with, she had no promising career, no education for it, no interest in it and specifically married more affluent man to avoid working and live at his expense without even trying to take care of the household or raise children.
These situations, however, are less and less common in today’s society. Today, in many industries, women earn more than men, there is largely equal pay for equal work and if not employers get sued into bankruptcy; both spouses are working and running businesses and there is really no distinction between genders in earning capacity or interest in pursuing a career.
In addition, with LGBTQ couples there is a higher percentage of high-income earners and for them the argument that someone is going to be left poor and destitute because of divorce doesn’t even pass the straight-face test (pun)!
All this means that in today’s world, with both spouses freely pursuing their careers, both less involved in sacrificial child raising, both coming out of marriage financially independent, the existence of the institution of spousal support is no longer justified!
When people get married, they should be doing it because they believe in the institution of traditional marriage and want to be with each other voluntarily because they love each other. While they are together they should be free to make whatever financial arrangements they want to make but when love is gone and they are ready to part ways, there should no longer exist any financial obligations except the division of property based on the specific monetary investment of each spouse into that property.
WHY INSTITUTION OF MARRIAGE IS IN CRISIS AND HOW TO SAVE IT
Fear of ugly divorce, punishing spousal support and unfair property division (50/50 even when one of the spouses invested NOTHING into that property) ruins family values more than any liberalism or feminism ever could – it chills marriage especially for people who want to accomplish something in life and are worried that whatever they earn in the future could be stolen from them by their former significant other if the relationship doesn’t work out.
Marriage is already perceived by ever increasing number of young people as an outdated religion-based institution that requires so much self-restraint-based commitment and so much sacrifice of personal freedom that it’s not worth pursuing. Marriage should not feel like an emotional prison. However, when in addition to being perceived as an emotional prison, as a chore and obligation, marriage threatens financial devastation upon divorce – it loses whatever diminished value it still retained as an institution.
We are living in times of pursuit of happiness, not pursuit of commitment! Individuals, especially educated ones, feel that their self-worth and value take precedence over the interests of anyone else – loved ones, society, employers and their country. Me, me, me, I won the war against Us, us, us!
There are some exceptions of course, but the majority of us are quite selfish.
Inevitably, the institution of marriage fell victim to this new mentality. If we are still placing some value on the institution of marriage as such, if we want to revive it to stabilize our society, and make children most of whom are now living in divorced families happier, we need to modify marriage as an institution.
Some naïve people believe that modification of marriage to allow gay marriage ruined the institution of marriage. The other group believes the opposite because with gay marriages there is more marriages altogether. In reality, this is not make much difference either way, because the devastating financial consequences of divorce still remain the same for both straight and gay couples.
The real reason why the Institution of marriage is undergoing major crisis is that for the modern generation, it’s already difficult to commit to ANYTHING, not just to being with another person forever! Anxiety-driven me, me, me demands endless non-stop excitement from every precious moment of life, and commitment and self-restraint are major party poopers! This is the truth (ugly or not!)
So the minute the romantic passion is no longer there – married life begins to feel like a routine – and then there is some impatience with each other’s upbringing and habits, and then for some, there are some child-raising chores on the horizon and so life becomes a routine and marriage becomes a trap. Just like any other animal, humans don’t like being trapped! A financial spousal support award to the spouse you no longer want to be with as you are trying to get out of this trap makes marriage feel like even more of a trap for those who are just thinking about getting married.
Why is abortion even an issue? Because sex with a condom is not enjoyable as compared to sex without it – not because of all these larger-than-life statements about bloody fetuses or women’s right to choose! If women forced men to use condoms or avoided penetration or any other method of sperm getting into their bodies there could not be any pregnancy to begin with! No need for abortion or even abortion pills! Of course, no one talks about this or celibacy because in this day and age, the worst thing you can do to them is to deprive them of pleasure. Pleasure is the king! You can take anything away from people – their money, their freedom, their cultural space, their privacy – anything – and they will still tolerate it , but if you take away their pleasure – they will do whatever they can to destroy you!
Marriage is not designed for pleasure; – it’s designed for commitment and stability.
If we want children to enjoy a happy life with both parents around , if we want more stable relationships and more stable society, we should modify the institution of marriage to make it more attractive! Eliminating any and all financial burdens for more affluent spouses upon divorce would be the first and important step towards making marriage more attractive, and it would safeguard against spousal parasitism and “golddigger-ism” as well! There would be no incentive for golddiggers to marry someone for money because they would know – they are getting nothing if divorce happened! A more affluent spouse would know for a fact that their less affluent partner is with them because they love them , not their money. Property division would be based on fair apportionment of value based on who actually invested and how much into that house, who took out a loan, the actual contribution, and not automatic 50/50 division – those who did not contribute financially to buy the house would get nothing upon divorce!
CONCLUSION
To summarize, if we still believe that the institution of marriage is beneficial for our society, we must eliminate the institution of spousal support completely and radically modify the system or property division. Child support can remain since it is already based on reasonable principles of helping the custodial parent to raise children because the custodial parent is the one spending most money and energy on them. However, spousal support is an ugly, morally reprehensible and unfair system of punishment for more affluent spouses to support someone they hate or simply don’t care about. Spousal support breeds “golddiggers” who want to take advantage of their future spouse they are planning to divorce. Spousal support breeds family parasites who upon divorce use spousal support as a source of income and financial punishment for their ex-spouse. Spousal support contributes to the crisis of the institution of marriage in that it chills marriages, making people already unwilling to take on a commitment even less willing to do so because of the potentially devastating financial consequences. Therefore, a major reform of family law must be implemented to eliminate spousal support and severely limit property division upon divorce.
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About The Author
Dim Simple
Western society (and others who attempt to copy its modern trends) are on their way to extinction because western institutions are dominated by advocates of human parasites, and because western mainstream ideology is currently based on wealth redistribution that unsustainably caters to various groups of “professional victim – parasites.”
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