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Comment by RcouF1uZ4gsC | Hacker News Reader

The issue is that marriage often produces children. In many cases, one partner will take a more active role with the children while the other takes a more active role in their career. If they stay married it works out. However, if they split, the partner who took a more active role with the children will be shortchanged. The law tries to address this issue.

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Child support is a separate issue; if one parent ends up with a larger share of the custody, they will usually end up with some form of child support payments even if there is no income disparity.

Here we're talking about alimony and how community property works.

plenty of people have children without being married and plenty of married couples don't have children. assuming both parties actually wanted to have a child at the time, the child should be entitled to support from both parents and the primary caregiver should probably get something from the other parent. whether the parents are married seems like it should be pretty much orthogonal.

Unfortunately there are a lot of men who will get a woman pregnant, have her take care of the kids, not marry her. He will pay for everything then later after the kids are out leave her but she gets nothing because they are not married and everything is in his name. Now she has to start from scratch and is middle aged so she doesn't have a lot of time to build a career, pay into social security, has no savings, etc. Why do men do this? Women fall in love with bad men unfortunately. Once she is already pregnant then he has all of the leverage.

Yes this, this is why community property, common law marriages, and alimony exists. To help correct the imbalance of power, and the justice of the situation.

The bottom line is raising kids as a stay at home parent is a huge burden. It's entirely unpaid (in money and career). The beneficiaries are both parents. To allow a man (or rich woman, the laws in California are fairly gender neutral here) to accrue the benefits, and disallow the woman any benefits from her sacrifice, well most people consider that to be unfair. And so do the courts.

> Once she is already pregnant then he has all of the leverage.

Surely you mean no leverage? She can abort or put up for adoption, he can do neither, nor "financially" abort (nor prevent abortion if she wants it).

I think you misunderstand my point. if all this stuff is important for a woman who's going to be the primary caregiver to the children, it should be codified regardless of whether the parents are actually married.

That's how child support works: completely independently of marital status.

This is fairly remedial cultural anthropology of the society we work in, but it should be entirely obvious as to why being married is helpful if you have children, including the same last name (or at least an hyphenated add-on) A lot of people in society use these short cuts to make fast decisions in critical moments. For example, your child and partner was in a car crash, you arrive at the ER, and you want to see them. Can you? The real answer is "it depends on if the nurse/doctor/receptionist lets you", not what the law says. All you have on you is your ID, last name "Crew" and your partner has last name "Smith". Ah, who are you says the receptionist, I'm going to have to call security if you don't leave.

Or consider immigration, border guards, or any other number of more fluid situations. People, generally speaking, respect a married relationship and hold it up at a more privileged level. This is what the marriage equality fight was about, since people usually don't respond well to the clarion call of "but we have a legally binding registered civil relationship in the state of California!". That doesn't roll off the tongue as your partner is literally dying in the ER and you can't see them.

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