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Comment by 01100011 | Hacker News Reader

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Reform alimony now.

Force consistent rules at the federal level. Make childless divorces straightforward and fair. Eliminate the notion that a former spouse is responsible for maintaining a 'standard of living' established during the marriage. If two adults want to part ways, make them responsible for being adults.

To anyone not married, please understand what you are agreeing to by getting married. It is a legally binding contract that has nothing to do with romanticized notions of true love. There is an industry of people looking to profit from you and exploit you. Be extremely careful who you enter into that contract with.

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On the one hand you say spouses should not be responsible for maintaining a standard of living but on the other you say people should know what they’re getting into with marriage. This cuts both ways. If you don’t want to be solely responsible for someone else’s standard of living then maybe make sure they plan to be self-sufficient BEFORE you get married. Or sign a prenup. Alimony is no secret.

This becomes even more unrealistic when you introduce the concept of a “homemaker.” Usually that involves kids but it doesn’t necessarily have to. If a couple decides to have one get an education and a paying job and the other has responsibilities around the home then that is how they’ve chosen to divide their labor. You can’t just maintain a balance for your marriage but come divorce time say “oh well, they can take care of themself.” The working spouse has a massive head start and the non-working spouse has (possibly unwillingly) had a massive downgrade in QOL forced on them.

Alimony seeks to create equality. Either equality in success or equality in hardship. It probably isn’t a perfect system and I’ve seen instances where it is massively abused but I don’t think the concept or execution is overly flawed. Perhaps too many adults are jumping into marriage without fully understanding what it means and how it might end.

People change. The ex in my case was self sufficient when I met her and then chose not to be. Was I supposed to withhold food and shelter from her to force her back into the workforce?

Alimony was not obvious to me as a 21 year old introverted virgin getting married.

If you want a specific arrangement then you should draft it in your marriage contract. It should not be the default assumption imposed by the state under the threat of incarceration.

Alimony is an antiquated concept based on outdated gender stereotypes and not in line with the modern workforce. Alimony seeks to create equality when none should exist. Alimony rewards deadbeats and forces exploitative relationships to continue, often indefinitely or without end. It is abusive to many, it is unjust, and it must be reformed.

What about the case where the couple both agreed that the wife should leave the workforce to stay at home with the kids? After kids are grown, they get a divorce and then what?

Put it in the contract. Don't apply your rules to every marriage by default.

It’s not in every marriage by default. Divorce is negotiated between lawyers, judges and juries(?).

No, it is, at least in CA, and you have to have both parties agree if you want something else.

Get married to a person who refuses to work and then get a divorce. Guess what? They will, by default, be entitled to the standard of living established during the marriage.

Do prenups work? My understanding is that many states effectively void them (including California).

I’m not a lawyer, but as I understand it, prenups protect premarital assets (like your childhood pet or a necklace your grandma gave you), but would not protect you from income that was generated during the marriage, like if you started and sold a company.

There are special exemptions on inheritances that happen during the marriage, but you have to be careful with commingling assets and it depends state to state. Like if you provide the down payment, but split the mortgage, the house is 50/50 owned

This is not correct AFAIK. Prenups protect what you decide they protect, assuming they are created in a legally binding manner.

In California and many states, inheritance and gifts are always sole property of the recipient and not considered community property. My ex was gifted property from a relative during the marriage(so they could illegally claim state benefits, but that's another story), and it was not even on the table during the divorce.

In CA, if you provided the down payment on the mortgage with non-community money and then used community money to pay th mortgage, you could ask for the non-community down payment back and get 50% of the community interest in the home after that.

My understanding is that many states effectively void them (including California).

This is false. Courts generally uphold prenups. You only hear about the times they don't because that's news. See, for example, the McCourt divorce (upholding a postnup).

Talk to a lawyer. AFAIK they work. They require both parties to have their own legal counsel. If you have one lawyer act as counsel for both parties you are risking the prenup being tossed.

They work if done properly. Get a good family law attorneys who specializes in prenups.

Not sure. I’m no expert. I guess this is part of your pre-marriage research that you should be doing. And of course a frank discussion with your soon-to-be spouse about expectations is a good idea.

What if you've been struggling to get your partner to make an income and trade (or at least share) homemaking and child rearing with you, and they drag their feet for years? Should you still owe them anything?

There is rarely anything straightforward in a divorce. Children make things a lot harder but they are not the only thing. Both parties have made sacrifices and both parties often contribute to success.

I’m not that familiar with the standard of living laws but if my wife and I broke up I would feel horrible if she had to severely down grade her lifestyle. I hold the position of the primary earner. My salary is several factors bigger than what she makes. However, she takes care of so many things for me that I can focus on earning. We are partners. She has easily earned her way. If we got divorced, I would still get to benefit from the position I was able to rise to with her help. She deserves to be taken care of.

> ...if my wife and I broke up I would feel horrible if she had to severely down grade her lifestyle.

Would that not depend very much on the reason why you broke up? If it was because of a mutual conclusion of the relationship I can imagine this would be true. If you break up because you found out she'd been cheating on every occasion, shuffling money and attention towards her many side affairs, spreading rumours about your you and otherwise doing her best to play the black widow you probably would reconsider. If not, why not?

This would be tragic but it wouldn’t change the fact that she helped me get where I am. My ego and pride would want her to get nothing but those two things rarely cause me to think rationally.

Someone once said, “when you forgive someone you let a prisoner free. The surprising thing is that prisoner is yourself”. So I hope I would have the strength to forgive her, and hope the best for her life going forward.

She would be rewarded with half of your accumulated wealth during the marriage. Isn't that fair? Why should you also have to continue paying her after she has stopped supporting you? What do you think a fair timeline for that support should be? A year? Five years? Half the length of the marriage? Indefinitely?

I don’t know the length of time that is fair but I trust the court system to determine that. This is definitely an area where my opinion is underdeveloped. I haven’t put enough thought into it to have a rational answer.

> otherwise doing her best to play the black widow

It is extremely rare for people to kill and eat their spouse. What a weird metaphor.

Maintaining the same standard of living is impossible under the same revenue. I live in a 2bd apartment; renting two 1bds would cost more than one 2bd. I’d have to go from one car to two, and a huge array of personal expenses would either get duplicated (power, Internet), or would become more expensive for the same amount (food, cell phone).

Yes, usually the standard of living for everyone drops after the marriage. If the higher earner goes on to make more money, the lower-earning spouse can, in CA anyway, ask you for more money up to what it takes to provide the standard of living established in the marriage.

My now wife was a completely self sufficient mother of two living in one of the best school systems in our metro area.

We had been dating for a little while and were definitely in the “pre-engagement” phase but knew where things were headed.

We both were laid off when the company we worked for went out of business. She already had a job lined up making less, but she couldn’t afford to be without health insurance. I had a contract lined up making more. I promised her if she took the job, I could make up the gap and I did.

A few months later, one week after I proposed, my contract abruptly ended. She said, forget about the ceremony, let’s go to the courthouse, get married so I could get on her insurance. I found another contract shortly thereafter.

Six months later, I had a full time job, and her hours were crazy (tech support for a carrier) and my (step)sons were missing her and it wasn’t helping our marriage. We talked about her quitting and finding something with better hours for the sake of all of us.

Fast forward seven years later. We are both working and she is back to making what she was before we got married. The hours weren’t bad, but it still caused a commute and our youngest son was going through teenage issues. Again we decided for her to take a lower paying job closer.

The job paid less, but had good benefits. That allowed me to leave a full time job to take a contract to perm job that would let me lead two green field projects. It would be a great career booster.

Four years later, that led me down the road of having a job making $100K more. Covid hit, her job would have involved her being in the school system. We talked, and again, it wasn’t best for any of us for her to be exposed. She quit her job before school starts back.

Of course by now we have the big house in the burbs. Our lives and her decision to make herself completely dependent on me was based entirely on her trusting me and taking me at my word. On the other hand, there is a direct line to my current income from here supporting me. How is it right for her to be left on the street penniless when she would be in that position solely because she trusted me?

Is there anything I proposed which would prevent you from voluntarily supporting her after a divorce?

Do you often feel that the highly specific situation you find yourself in should be the basis for laws applied without cause to the rest of society?

If you have an arrangement like that, put it in a contract yourself. Don't ask the government to force me to live by your rules.

If we are getting divorced, how willing would I hypothetically be of supporting my wife? If I “wrote a contract”, should we have changed the contract every time that we made a decision for both of our benefit long term?

Do you often feel that the highly specific situation you find yourself in should be the basis for laws applied without cause to the rest of society?

It’s highly specific for married couples to work together and make choices that benefit the household as a whole, but puts one at a financial disadvantage if they separate? That’s kind of a sad outlook on life and marriage. Yes, I am on my second marriage. I know the realities of divorce.

Is it also highly unusual for one spouse to stay at home or take a lower paying job because it is beneficial to the family as a whole? (No, people go into education all of the time for just that reason).

Is it very specific for one spouse to take a job just for the benefits while the other is able to make more by being self employed or starting a business?

If a couple is not working together for the benefit of the family unit as a whole, something is wrong.

>If we are getting divorced, how willing would I hypothetically be of supporting my wife?

Beats me.

> If I “wrote a contract”, should we have changed the contract every time that we made a decision for both of our benefit long term?

That should be up to you. I'm not trying to tell you what you have to do. That's the point.

> puts one at a financial disadvantage if they separate

Why is this a given? Your wife is still entitled to half of your accumulated wealth during the marriage. That's not what alimony is. Alimony is the continued support you are forced to provide.

The examples you state are not a given and should not be the default assumption of a marriage contract.

> If a couple is not working together for the benefit of the family unit as a whole, something is wrong.

That's your opinion and should not be assumed by the state.

Why is half the wealth accumulated during a marriage not restitution enough?

If your spouse stayed at home supporting your family while you worked and built your career, but you didn’t accumulate savings early on. Your income stream is a marital “asset”. She helped you build that asset.

Besides that “accumulated” assets are just that, “accumulated” over a span as your income increases.

Would you be okay if you were 50/50 in a startup, worked hard early on and then when the other partner saw that the result of the early work was about to make a massive amount of money but hadn’t yet, they pushed you out, split the early assets and were able to enjoy the growth without you? Wouldn’t you feel entitled to the income stream?

The stereotypical example is the wife working, while the husband goes to medical school and when they graduate, they leave the wife. At that point, they haven’t accumulated much in assets.

You can recycle that example all you want but it only shows that there are specific circumstances and the assumption should not be baked in by default.

Lets say you were 50/50 in a startup. You worked your youth away, sometimes 80 hour weeks. The other partner hung around and then did nothing but generate empty platitudes and empty promises for the next few years. Would you be ok if that partner sold their half of the company you built and then demanded indefinite royalties from you?

The stereotypical example is just that. It is not true in many modern cases. It should not be the legal default. In my case, my partner started working and had a career when we met. I developed my skills while they sat idle. My income grew. They stopped working and made endless promises of building home based businesses that ate thousands of dollars and never went anywhere. To avoid having to follow through, they eventually got a minimum wage job again. I was at fault for not leaving sooner, but I believed in their talent and wanted to help them succeed. There was no 'family' for them to care for. I did my share of the chores and cooking, while spending my free time renovating the family home. For all my patience and work, I am now punished severely by the state.

So you think that your example is so representative of the majority of marriages that your view should be forced on every young couple in America. Ok fine. So when the marriage ends, how long do you think that support should continue for? Should the state be able to force the high-income earner to work against their will as is the case now? Should the behavior of the low-earner during the marriage be a factor at all, as it currently is not?

If that was the initial legal agreement? Yes. You went in knowing the terms of the agreement and you took the risk.

I was at fault for not leaving sooner, but I believed in their talent and wanted to help them succeed.

I made the same mistake, I was an idealistic 28 year old, tired of the dating game and she wasn’t the right person but came along at the right time. She didn’t do anything to help me too much. I filed for divorce four years later, I knew the longer we stayed married, the more risks I had of long term consequences - taking more of my net worth, child support (we didn’t have kids), etc.

My previous post was about my second marriage.

Ok fine. So when the marriage ends, how long do you think that support should continue for?

You act as if the law is one size fits all. It’s a “judgement” call. That’s why we have judges, lawyers, etc.

Of course no one is going to be married for a year and have to pay alimony for the rest of their life. I didn’t pay any alimony. Then again we were only married for four years and she couldn’t realistically argue that she helped me succeed.

But in general, pay alimony long enough for them to conceivably get on their feet. Four or five years maybe. But the longer you are married, the more it is going to cost you.

> You went in knowing the terms of the agreement

I certainly didn't. In talking with people, I find most people do not as well.

> That’s why we have judges, lawyers, etc.

Yes. The lawyer I spoke to said typical court costs are $10k per day. Family court judges rotate in from other branches and often do not know the law(statutory or case law). Vocational evaluation is $2,500+.

> pay alimony long enough for them to conceivably get on their feet.

So why not codify this in law? Why not force disclosure when obtaining a marriage license?

It should be a simple contract with a checklist type of design and something that hopefully can be customized to a degree by both the parties.

Plus the Trump tax “cuts” actually removed the tax deductibility of alimony from the payer, and made it tax free for the recipient.

So if you make $150,000, and pay $65,000 of that in alimony to your ex, your ex can end up with a higher net income.

This actually is a broken part IMO. I’ve read that it actually just hurts both parties because a judge still must try to maintain an equivalent QOL but since alimony is paid from post-tax income now they cannot afford as much so less is taken. Likewise, even though it is tax-free for the recipient, since less is taken they often end up with less.

I can’t remember where I read this but I’ll see if I can track down a source.

It makes sense. Income taxes are progressive, which means you pay (percentually) more the more you earn.

Let's see an example. Say that the payer earns 120k pre-tax. Now:

a) If you tax the recipient the judge orders a 60k/60k split. After the split both parties get taxed for 60k, which lands them on the 22% marginal tax rate bracket. In the end each party effectively pays 11k in taxes, and hence gets 49k post-taxes.

b) If you tax the earner they pay taxes first, hitting the 24% tax rate bracket and effectively paying ~29k in taxes. So you spit the remaining 91k and each party gets 45.5k post-taxes.

Definitely a lose-lose.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_tax_in_the_United_State...

I believe the reasoning was a simple tax grab. They saw the deduction as some sort of dodge allowing someone making $200,000 a year and paying $50,000 a year in alimony, to move that $50k in income from a high tax brackets to a low brackets, even though now these are two separate people legally.

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