There is a popular opinion going around that women are encouraged to end their marriages "for cash and prizes". Let's examine whether it's true or just another emotional tool to discourage marriages among Western people.
I've witnessed many divorces (unfortunately). Sometimes the husband was to blame, sometimes the wife and sometimes both. Most women who I know who initiated divorce had either adulterous husbands or were adulterous themselves. There were also women who were partly motivated by the husbands being lousy providers/borderline abusive etc. I don't know anyone who was motivated by boredom (they probably exist but I have never met them), much less by the desire "to steal the half of his stuff".
However, this is anecdotal evidence, so let's turn to facts. Obviously, I'm not going to disclose anyone's personal history online, so we'll have to do with an estimation. And here I have a question: when virtual sages are talking about "half his stuff" do they suggest that every man is a millionaire? Because half of the lower middle class guy's stuff is not that much. Plus, most women nowadays work at least part-time while married or have worked before and have some savings or have had money from their family etc etc. It's their stuff, too.
So here is our hypothetical family who live in a house which costs about 200k. It could be less or more but it's about average in some places. Let's say they bought it for 175k and also they paid a part of their mortgage.They have been married for 10 years and the wife works 2.5 days per week and is about 40. Then one day they divorce. The house is on both of their names so they sell it, pay the bank and have the profit of about 50k which they have to divide in 2. Each has 25 000. The man works full time and is the main breadwinner. He comes to the bank and easily gets another mortgage. The wife whose income is much less, not so much...
To get a decent amount of money she'll have to start working full time which most women don't want to do here in Europe. Still, the house she'll be able to buy with her income alone will probably be worse than what they could buy with their combined income if you follow me. It all may work very well when she finds another man, but as long as she stays single she won't really become wealthier. I'm not even talking here about custody arrangements, the costs of daycare (and no, child support won't make you really rich, either, plus fathers nowadays can ask for split custody).
The peaceful separation described above isn't always a fact, either, as may people have a contested divorce which means they will have to hire a lawyer, go to court, miss work and so on. You really need to be very stupid to divorce a good husband hoping for any "cash and prizes"".
The same people warning you against thieving females will tell you especially to beware of the housewives because they will get more out of you. So let's get back to our scenario above but now the lady is a housewife who's been out of the workforce for 10 years. She comes to the bank with her 25 000 and no job, does she get a mortgage, what do you think? If she can't find a good job, which is quite possible in this day and age, she'll probably have to move to social housing which is full of the sort of people most normal folks will try to avoid like a plague.
What about alimony,the biggest scare in some parts of the web? First, depending on the husband's income and the amount of child support he has to pay, it won't be much unless he is very wealthy. Second, if the wife can work and has no children under the age of 12, she probably won't get it. Third, the new law states that partner alimony can't be paid longer than 5 years in the majority of cases. Older women and women with small children or both (since so many women nowadays get kids late in life) will have problems both finding a good job and finding a new provider as modern men don't rush to rescue the damsel in distress.
The chance is that the divorced older woman will end up on welfare which is based on the minimum salary. You won't be able to go on vacation and you won't even be able to have a car any more. So no, unless the woman is married to a wealthy guy, she won't profit from her divorce.
And wealthy guys all marry with contracts where you can stipulate that the ex-wife will get nothing if divorce is her fault, for instance. There are also other ways to safe keep your family money, by creating a fund, by declaring the family property as the company property and putting the company on the husband's name etc etc. A rich man will always find a way.
You will tell me that it's different in the USA. It can be, I don't really know. But the times of life-long alimony in the world of the working women are more or less over. It is my personal opinion that scare-mongering about the financial horrors of divorce for men (if it's so horrific why do I know so many guys who ran away from their wives?) and the advice that if you do marry you should keep your wife working and never ever allow her to stay home are a malicious attack on the traditional Western family model coming from the same progressive corner, only this time they pretend to be friends to men.
The truth is that nobody profits from a divorce. It's true that young women nowadays are taught to ditch their husbands for the most trivial of reasons. However, it's mostly a lie that this will improve their situation, especially if the young children are involved. I would like to end this post by reminding you that God hates divorce and that if you are any sort of a Christian you should hate, it, too. Please don't do it, unless there are really very compelling reasons ("falling out of love" isn't one of them).
Here in Finland alimony has not existed for decades. Maybe not ever. I have never, ever heard ex-husband paying single euro for his ex-wife. Property is divided (assumption is that married couple is a unit that creates their property together), but when the divorce is settled, he does not need to pay a cent for her.
ReplyDeleteChild support, is of course, another thing. It often seems to me that Men Of Internet do not understand that child support is for the children, not for their ex. They also do not seem to understand how costly it can be to feed and clothe kids....
In general, women divorcing their husbands ruin their own economy once and for all. It seems to me that divorced men usually do financially better, because they have better paying jobs. Almost all women here work full time, but mothers usually do not make as much money as fathers.
Divorce is the worst economical decision one can make. Especially here: most often parents will have week-week-custody, meaning kids they one week with mother and one week with father. So instead of one house large enough for the family, two houses are needed. If the couple stayed together, there would be two incomes for that one house/flat. Now there is one income for one family-sized house/flat... Economically divorce makes no sense. (Sometimes kids are mostly with their mother but every other weekend with their father. Kids are supposed to have their own rooms anyway in both places, you cannot make your kids sleep on the living room floor. But week-week-arrangement is the norm.)
I must say that in Portugal everywoman works till retirement age, which is very late, and the few ones who don't work are given a side eye.
ReplyDeleteAnd I agree that divorce doesn't seem good in any aspect of life, let alone economically.
Things are a bit different here in the U.S. For instance, in my home state (FL) there is still an ongoing battle to reform alimony laws as ours is one of six remaining states where permanent alimony is still in effect. Permanent meaning the wife gets paid until she dies or remarries.
ReplyDeleteThe reality in the U.S. is that almost any mechanism that gives women a leg up is battled over tooth and nail as women's groups do everything they can to give women the advantage in divorce and custody situations.
That being said, you're right that very few men make enough money to pay significant alimony. Usually, child support is the most common way of transferring assets from the husband to the ex-wife. I don't have any qualms about child support as much as I do with the uphill battles fathers face when it comes to shared custody, which is battled against precisely because it eliminates the need for the higher income spouse to pay significant child support.
So, with all that in mind, I'm going to agree with you because every man I've known who divorced (whether she left or he left) took a pretty big hit financially during the first couple of years as he made adjustments to the new normal. But by five years out, he's usually in a really comfortable position while the ex-wife is perpetually struggling to make ends meet and more stressed out. Unless she remarries and sometimes even then.
Divorce doesn't come with cash and prizes except for among the fabulously wealthy. Keep in mind though that for many men in Internet land, being forced to pay an ex-wife as little as $1000 a month seems like too much even if it's to house and feed the kids.
I mean...who KNOWS what she's doing with that money??? (/sarc)
It's nice to hear different perspectives on the issue. In Holland many people still think mothers belong at home yet many women also work (usually part-time), for the bigger mortgage and luxuries. So men are per default in a better financial position. Alimony used to be life long until the mid-1990s, then it was cut to the maximum of 12 years, now it's 5 unless you have children under 12 or are older. This is all thanks to feminists who want all women in the workforce, since housewives have the most to lose in the case of divorce.
ReplyDeleteThose who really profit from it are lawyers and bankers who sell mortgages, imo.
The amount of child support here is dependent on the income of both parents, but the guy who earns less is also going to pay less.
ReplyDeleteYes. This is true. I have known a couple of women where the court looked at the formula and said the wife was 60% financially responsible for the child to the man's 40%.
ReplyDeleteIn most marriages, the husband makes more money than the wife so the standard memes don't account for the exceptional cases where the wife has to pay.
Here is the link to an official page about calculating child support:
ReplyDeletehttps://zwangerbuikkramp.nl/gemiddelde-alimentatie-per-kind.html
It i in Dutch, so I'll translate some highlights. They give 2 examples, Situation 1 and 2. In both situations the wife earns 500 per month and there are 2 children of 6 and 12/ 4 and 6 who are going to live with her. In both cases, the wife also gets 100 euro per month from the government (standard for families with kids). The first husband is going to pay 421 euros per month, the second 288 but if the children stay with him every weekend instead of every other weekend, he'll have to pay 246 euros per month.
As you can see, while the wife's income is the same, wife number 2 will have much less money. Now let's calculate her total income per month: 500+100+246 makes 846 euros per month, less than welfare norm for a single mother of 2 as far as I know. I don't know how can anyone live on it without government help.
Wife number 1 is in a better situation, but still far from being filthy rich. One can hardly name it cash and prizes, can he?
I think men find these situations unfair, because they feel FAMILY's property is theirs. For example if family home is sold in divorce, they feel they should get all the money. At least here it will be shared 50/50. They claim they payed bigger part of that house, so it is theirs, bu-huu. And conviniently forget they managed to pay more because their wife was at home breastfeeding their kids... (Even though almost all women work full time here, almost every mother will have 9 months maternity leave for each child. That obviously has an impact on their career.)
ReplyDeleteMy solution is: pick your spouse more carfully. Men, do not marry women who are likely to leave you. This means do not marry that sexy lil' prom queen but try to find someone with principles and character. Women, do not marry men who are not righteous and just.
If the mortgage is on his name or the income difference is very big, the chance is that he'll get the house over here and will pay a sum of money to his wife. I know several men who kept the house after divorce.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you but think there is more factors to consider. Here the divorce rates skyrocketed after women went out to work in the 1990s. Modern family arrangements are often quite unnatural plus neither boys nor girls are taught how to be a good spouse any more
That's why I think it's so stupid to blame "women". The society changed so the women changed, too. We could just as well blame "men" for allowing it to happen. Young men nowadays would rather feed the baby then handle weapons or work hard. My husband goes to the shooting range and the average age is like 50+. When so many guys are soy boys and so many girls are more interested in partying and/ or career than motherhood, it's not a wonder that nearly half the marriages fall apart, it's a wonder that not all of them do.
ReplyDeleteSanne
ReplyDeleteEurope is very different to the English speaking world when it comes to divorce. Our legal system is adversarial, combative, it is intellectual combat to determine someones guilt or innocence. That works in criminal law, less so in civil law and works very badly in divorce and custody law. But that is the system.
In most cases women will get control of the house because she will have custody of the children. It is not unusual for men to lose all access to their children while still being made to pay child support. To have to pay children support while another man has sex with the mother of your children...and you better be happy about!
I know a man who lost his military book collection because it was awarded to his wife. Another who was accused of molesting his daughter, another who was reported because they said he was going to kill is children, not because these things happened but because it would help deny him access to his children. Another who's wife said she was bored and destroyed the marriage even though they had children. These are cases I know of personally!
Mark Moncrieff
Mark, I'm very sorry to hear that. Someone told me that Australia is really very feminist, more so than the US, so it could very well be that most guys who complain are Australian!
ReplyDeleteBTW, men here still aren't content. We recently have had 2 murder-suicide cases, when the wife wanted to divorce her husband and he killed her and himself. Last time it was a police agent who shot his wife and their 2 kids. Men in comments showed sympathy with him and said that it happens when you try to steal a man's children. That's the general mood I guess:)