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Comment by antisthenes | Hacker News Reader

My interest lies in why is the baseline so high in the first place?

2.5%/y sounds like an unacceptable risk , considering how devastating divorce is for men by design (in the USA, at least)

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That the average for all marriages, but certain groups account for a disproportionate amount of divorces. The rate is a lot lower if you take out groups like that: under 20 when married, shotgun weddings, the already divorced, poorly educated, etc. IIRC, latinos who marry under the age 18 have an 80% 5-year divorce rate.

I'd heard people say a 20% lifetime chance of divorce if you are a middle class, educated, non-divorcee, and over 25. But I can't vouch.

I've seen similar numbers. I'd be curious to see how becoming an entrepreneur affects this. Practically every entrepreneur I know over the age of 40 has divorced.

Entrepeneurship killed a significant relationship of mine. It was entirely about money, she felt that I should continue to pursue my former profession, which provided meager, but stable income.

I was thinking about her and my future, which would require more than meager, stable income could provide.

Society hates entrepreneurship and that is why it is not a popular track: you need really thick skin to pursue it.

It's not about the money or lack of but the risk vs reward. Most males are risk takers where as most females are risk adverse(the why is many fold and not just limited to humans or even mammals).

My wife would hate it if I wanted to start a company, if she couldn't see a solid plan. If she could see the opportunity but more importantly the roadmap she would be on board.

But it's not just the uneducated that have high divorce rates. When I worked on Wall Street people there referred to their first wife as "my first wife" ... when they were still married to her! The expectation that everyone at the firm would eventually burn through 2 or 3 spouses was bizarre to me.

It doesn't seem that bizarre. If I called my current wife my first wife I doubt I'd still be on wife one.

Well, wait, you have to measure that against not marrying in the first place, which I presume also comes with pros and cons. The question is whether ExpectedValue(staying single) > ExpectedValue(Getting married given the risk with risk of divorce).

I assume the answer is different for different people.

An unacceptable risk, compared to what? Never marrying?

Living comes with a 100% chance of dying.

Yes, compared to never marrying, maybe paying child support but not alimony, or compared to getting sterilized.

I don't think that 2.5% is evenly distributed (as in, every year each couple pulls a ball from a lotto machine with 39 green and 1 red ball in it).

I know my own chance isn't 0%, but I'm confident that it's lower than average. I choose to be married to my wife and to raise our kids in that framework. It's not easy every day, but it's absolutely an acceptable risk, IMO.

i heard there's a lot of truth in the '7 year itch' milestone, but I havent seen the #s

Yes but there's no alternative to living, so it's not a factor to consider.

Good question, but I'm not sure why you included the gender distinction. Do you think divorce is less devastating for women, or that risk of divorce is more of a factor for men?

I think they mean how resources are split after a divorce, where courts are viewed as being more favourable to women.

For example I think women are more likely to keep children, whereas the men will pay alimony to support them. If there are no kids the resource split might be more equitable.

[edit] Also see further down: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12184148

Courts are more favorable to women in some ways, but the economic consequences are generally worse for women. "Worse" and "better" all depends on what endpoint you're looking at, just like all those studies on cholesterol (do you want to lower cholesterol or not die from heart problems?) -- do you want the alimony now or the overall financial health?

According to the 2010 Census only 3% of Americans receiving spousal benefits were men. This is after splitting the estate "equitably".

So I really don't understand what you mean by economic consequences are generally worse for women? 97% of the time it's the man's wages being garnished.

You are simplifying to wage garnishing. Probably the parent comment is intimating things like loss of socioeconomic position due to the divorce. If marriages are financially unequal in many cases, fundamentally, then divorce shows that too. But the consequences are like, how well you fare after versus before... the schoolteacher and the banker divorce, and which can maintain the social connections?

During a marriage, spouses share equally the family income even if one spouse is actually earning more than the other. At the time of separation, the estate is valued and then split equally.

From that point forward these two people have chosen to part ways. They no longer rely on each other or are bound to each other. They are two individuals existing independently in the world.

But a man is expected to pay the woman every week, until one or the other dies, or the woman remarries.

So an independent single divorced woman, her ex is now a paycheck. Almost never the other way around.

It's not a question of, were they better off married, because the marriage is over. Now as singles, what is the consequence of having been married?

The economic consequence of getting married and then divorced for a woman is a weekly payment. The economic consequence for a man getting married and then divorced is a large percentage of income after taxes is confiscated from him.

Not even necessarily a percentage of actual income either - it can be a percentage of the income the courts think the ex-husband should be earning, because there's this idea that men who are unemployed or underemployed, or even just self-employed and not doing as well as before, are doing it to screw their ex-wife out of the money they should be earning for her. (Little details like the entire industry they were employed in going away, or them being in their 50s and in a line of work with massive ageism, matter less than they perhaps ought. Especially since he probably can't afford a good lawyer.)

Reading news articles of judges telling 67 year old men to "just get a job" was pretty eye opening. [1]

MA passed an alimony reform act specifying that alimony should cease at full retirement age. The courts reinterpreted it to only apply prospectively to agreements after the law was enacted, when the clear meaning was that it should apply to all alimony. [2] These are the economic consequences.

[1] - https://www.bostonglobe.com/lifestyle/style/2013/10/19/new-s... [2] - https://www.divorcelawmonitor.com/2015/02/articles/alimony-a...

Here's another way to think of it...The economics of a marriage are just this: two people promising to be equals.

The man and woman give to each other everything they have; economic, socioeconomic, mind, body, and soul. There is perfect economy in this Union.

After such a union is dissolved, from one perspective both have lost half of everything. Both are a fraction of what they once were. The loss is staggering -- decimated five times over. But from another perspective, two souls are parting ways. They unwind their affairs and equitably share them. And walk away.

Except not for the man, for he is still bound by law to support the woman with weekly payments till he or she shall die, or she shall find another to wed.

Is this "chivalry" not deeply insulting to feminists?

It's not chivalry. The concept of alimony is a recognition that house keeping and child rearing is work too, even if not a job, that the stay-at-home spouse performs for the benefit of both parties. It's essentially unemployment benefits owed by the marriage as an association.

Now, implementations vary, it's often hard to know facts about the life of the marriage and there are certainly many biases affecting judgment, but the core idea is definitively feminist: fixing an injustice that overwhelmingly affects women in a gender-equitable way (both men and women should get alimony if they fulfill the conditions).

Are you saying a partner should be reimbursed after the fact for doing that job versus something in the workplace? Also I think the argument for diminished wages is overblown. If one partner chooses to stay at home, if that was their choice, then I don't get it. We all make choices which impact our future job prospects. Unless it's something that one spouse did to the other, why should one spouse pay reparations to the other?

Calling it something like unemployment benefits is a cute line, but a busted analogy. The child rearing did not produce income, but it does cost money. It's an expense which should be shared equally until the children are over 18 absolutely, and the number of hours spent caring for the children should be equally and highly valued. Child support is a different matter entirely. I think alimony by definition is not child support?

Now once the kids are grown a bit, perhaps your skills are now somewhat obsolete. Once the kids are in school full time, 5-6 years old, how many at that point are actually staying at home?

Even if a person is just starting a career, how many years into it does it take to get established? 2-3 years you can get started in almost any industry. Don't tell me the stay-at-home partner just really wanted to be a Doctor and they should be funded to go to that now. So I can absolutely see paying for 2-3 years if the income is there, and it's needed for the ex to get started in their new life.

The best thing for these laws will be gay marriage. When it's two same-sex partners being judged, how the decision making might be surprisingly rational!

> It's essentially unemployment benefits owed by the marriage as an association.

1) You don't get unemployment benefits for life. There is usually a limit. It is a free ride.

2) Women today expect men to share work at home equally. Not every couple does that but many do and most women do return to their jobs a few years after child birth. So what exactly should the women be reimbursed for?

Like I said, implementations vary and I don't mean to defend them all, just the core idea. And I'm not even necessarily a supporter of alimony at all; a system where such spouses got actual unemployment and other state benefits instead is probably preferable.

I could see how the state paying may seem preferable at first glance but as a tax payer I absolutely do not want to be paying to support people post-divorce.

We must change the legal framework so that women cannot effectively marry the state anymore. They are responsible for their own life choices just as any other person so I don't see why they should get a free ride.

It would be interesting to know what percentage of that 97% had child custody. The economic consequences of dependant children are enormous - apart from the cost of feeding, housing, clothing and caring for them, it significantly reduces your employment options.

It depends on the legal framework of the country you live in, but generally in the West I'd answer the question with no, at least from a financial perspective.

For example in the EU country I live in I'd have to pay 40% of my net income to my ex-wife even if there are no children and there was no fault (from a legal perspective) on my side for the divorce.

Considering that 40% of my net income is much more than even 100% of the average males income the risks of marriage by far outweigh the benefits for many men in my financial situation.

I realise of course that many women end up having to deal with financial issues after divorce because not every women can attract a husband with a high income and also women on average, regardless of education, devote less time to their careers compared to men (many choose to work part time to optimise for more time with children) which impacts their own income.

But the fact still remains that within the current legal framework a wife can decide at will to turn her husband into a revenue stream for life, doesn't matter how the conduct of both parties was.

She gets the real estate they've been living in, even if her husband owned it before marriage, she gets the children and in many Western countries she can even prevent her husband from seeing his children without having to face any penalties.

Does that kind of contract sound fair to you?

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