Alimony is Dead: Women, You Need to Pay Attention Here
My fellow women, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but it is time for a reality check: Alimony is not going to save you if you get divorced. I believe in true love and committed relationships. But, I also believe: You must be able to take care of yourselves financially!
One of my favorite choruses in the family law practice is:
I’ve been a homemaker for XX years. When I got pregnant, my husband and I talked about it, and he wanted me to stay home with the children.
No, let’s not put that decision solely on your husband. You two made a joint decision for you to leave your job and stay home to raise kids.
There’s NOTHING in the world wrong with stay-at-home moms. I admire anyone who volunteers for that job.
Everything is fine UNTIL these moms find themselves facing a divorce.
Here’s where it starts to hurt. The days where the judge automatically gives the stay-at-home mother her living in alimony after the divorce are gone. It’s not going to happen. Most household finances simply won’t support that kind of alimony. More likely, you’ll get temporary alimony for a few years that will cover some of your mortgage or health insurance.
The good news:
The divorce rate is not the rumored 50%. But, let’s assume here, just for a minute, that it’s 25%. Of you and your three best friends, one of you is going to get a divorce. What if it’s you?
Do you know what the poorest demographic in the country is? Single mothers. Do you know what sucks worse than being a divorced single mother? Being a poor divorced single mother.
State laws have come a long way to ensuring that non-custodial parents are compelled to pay child support, but women cannot live and raise children on child support alone. And, with more and more divorced parents sharing equal parenting time, the amount of child support paid to mothers is going down, not up. Am I advocating a change in the child support laws? No, quite the contrary: I advocate women arming themselves with work experience and marketable job skills.
To be clear, a marketable skill means something you know how to do that enables you to legitimately pay your mortgage, buy a car, obtain health insurance, and put groceries in the refrigerator.
Women cannot live on alimony.
Women with educations and marketable job skills have far more options in divorce than women who have let their skills and opportunities lapse.
Because they are less reliant, if at all, upon their soon-to-be-ex-husbands for support, financially-enabled women have more options. These women have given themselves the gift of financial independence. They can afford the mortgage on the marital residence or a security deposit on a new home. If their husbands take up with other women, quit their day jobs, and decide to join a rock band, the wives who have planned ahead are not destitute. They may even be better off.
It’s human nature to want to avoid thinking about these things. Planning for the future is painful when enjoying the present is so fun. We make fun of survivalists who store diesel fuel and canned beans underground in the event of zombie apocalypse or the election of a narcissistic egomaniac hellbent on systematically dismantling every core of our democracy. (An accusation levied against every president ever.)
We all want to assume that our spouses will always be good people who do the right thing. But divorce brings out the very worst in people. The man who bought you a puppy last Christmas may be the same man who puts spyware on your computer and picks through your garbage to try and find some good dirt on you.
Therefore, women, you need to take care of yourselves. You don’t have to plan for a divorce, but you need to be able to take care of your personal business. A woman who can afford to pack her bags is a woman with equal power in a relationship; she is a woman who stays because she chooses and wants to be married, not because it’s the only way she can make her car payment and pay for her kids’ soccer uniforms.