The System is Very Flawed

I am a woman who must pay her husband of 28 years alimony and child support so he can relax and do nothing while I work to support him. Obviously, the system is very flawed. I did not marry my husband to raise children and be a homemaker. He had a profession when I married him and so did I.

When he became middle age crazy and decided to chase after my 20 something year old employee I was willing to forgive him and told him we could work it out. I did not want a divorce but he obviously did. So he walked out and refused to work or help me with the kids. Two years later after I have been the sole provider and caretaker of our children the Judge decided to give him custody and alimony for life. He got rewarded for walking out and abandoning his family and I got penalized for being responsible and paying the bills and rearing our children!

Perhaps alimony was needed in days of yore when women were a man's property and did not work outside the home. If a man chose to leave , some form of payment may have been called for ( a return of her dowry perhaps). Now I can not understand in this day and age why a healthy grown adult can sit on their butt and get paid for the rest of their lives simply because they used to be married to someone.

No one explained to me when I got married that I was giving up my constitutional rights .The Judge has told me I can not move further than 8 miles from my home without losing my kids. He has given my ex so many concessions that I have nothing to go to the bargaining table with. I am at the mercy of an appeals court that does not know me. I have been denied a right to trial by a jury of my peers. I would prefer to be a criminal as criminal court does not have the right to take my children away from me unless they are endangered. In family court they are taken away for no reason.

I'm not an alcoholic nor am I a prostitute or drug addict. I don't even have a speeding ticket! I am a loving mother and a conservative stable adult- same job for 29 years, same marriage for 28 years , same home and neighbors for 20 years, never been arrested. Now I have 3 contempt charges looming against me for petty nonsense about visitation and late alimony payments and I'm being accused of criminal behavior- no burden of proof for the accuser whatsoever.

No one seems to know about this until its too late. Shouldn't the state have to notify us up front prior to entering the marriage contract? Criminals get their rights read to them- why don't mothers and fathers and husbands and wives. I will never marry again but then I will be accused of being a "whore" or the "c" word(Which has been used by my ex) if I chose to have a serious relationship with someone without the benefit??? of marriage.

I'm vocal and I'm fighting but lawyers just throw up their hands and say "that's the law". Its a goldmine for them. Emotionally I feel like a rape victim that is forced to have sex with her attacker every month for the rest of his life. It makes no sense. Do you know of any successful legislation to reverse this travesty?

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Did You Know? Alimony Videos

Alimony: A lottery

Alimony: A Wedding Scene

Equal Rights For Women?

Manamony is alimony for men. It's when the wife was making a lot more than the husband or even he is staying home and she is working. In the case of divorce she has to pay him a monthly amount of money instead of him paying her. They had several people on to talk about it and the thing that astounded me is that the women complained about having to pay! [Read more....]

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Wife Unable To Make Alimony Payments

I need help!! My ex is taking me back to court for contempt. I have not been paying alimony since my severance package ran out. I then filed for unemployment because my Mom got sick and I was taking her to all her doctors' appointments since she was not allowed to drive.

My unemployment ran out in April and I have been borrowing against my credit card. I have started looking for a job, but so far I haven't been able to find one in the area.

My ex is now asking me to bring in all my information about my retirement fund. I worked for the corporation for 28 years and was only married 8.

I have been paying alimony since 1995 which is supposed to be permanent since he is a quad. (even though I married him after his accident) He lives in the house that we (I) renovated and has his brother and now my ex's girlfriend also lives there.

Now his attorney is telling me to bring to court all my pension plan papers. Is anyone familiar with Qualified Domestic Relations Order?

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Article: Protests From The Women Paying Alimony

It seems that most women can't accept the fact that they should have to pay alimony. Sweetie, your Momma always told you that you can't have your cake and eat it too.

You wanted equality and you got it. Now, bear the responsibility like a man has to and feel the pain like he does.

Article:
But there continues to be protest from some of the female population, especially in those cases where women are forced to pay spousal support to a deadbeat husband. In fact, some litigators find that their female clients had no idea what was ahead when they chose to support their husbands financially and emotionally through most of the marriage out of a sense of obligation and kindness. The idea that they would asked to continue to do so after the dissolution never occurred to them.

“I think most women never give this another thought. Most are shocked to find they could have to pay spousal support,” Sember said. “There's always someone taking advantage of every system, so why should this one be any different? But I don't think though that there are many men who are taking low paying jobs for years with a plan to eventually get a divorce and get alimony. I think there are more men who are simply thrilled to find out they could get alimony and then paint themselves as house-husbands or primary child caretakers in order to make it clear they are not just deadbeats who don't earn a lot of money.”

Either way, the court often times just doesn’t care. “These women have allowed their husbands to sponge off them for how many years? They really created their own monster and now they want to complain about it,” Gold-Bikin said. “They should have seen it coming.” [Read more....]

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Article: Men Receiving Alimony Want A Little Respect

Divorce experts say that fewer and fewer men are rejecting outright any talk of seeking alimony. The percentage of alimony recipients who are male rose to 3.6% during the five years ending in 2006, up from 2.4%, in the previous five-year period, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

That percentage is likely to rise as more and more marriages feature a primary earner who is female. In 2005 (the latest year for which data are available), wives outearned their husbands in 33% of all families, up from 28.2% a decade earlier. ...

....."In some instances, alimony has become akin to a social-welfare program provided by working women to their ex-husbands...."

..... Some feminists say cases such as Mr. Garnick's show progress of a sort. "We can't assert rights for women and say that men aren't entitled to the same rights," says the famous feminist lawyer, Gloria Allred....

...To Ms. Friedman, that financial history fails to support the argument that she should send thousands a month to her ex-husband, with whom she had no children. "I don't understand why someone becomes your financial responsibility just because you married them," says Ms. Friedman, who earns about $500,000 a year as the supervising producer of the soap opera "The Bold and the Beautiful." [Read more...]

Here's another spin-off article. What's interesting here are the reader comments, after the article:

Men Receiving Alimony - and Admitting It

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A Spouse's Guide To Hiding Assets

A press release that just came to my attention seemed to be one that would be of interest to this Blog's readers. In that with the family law industry draining spouses assets, a way is needed to prevent this. This book might be able to help you with that.

PRESS RELEASE:

Panama Publishing, Inc. has recently published the Pro Se Self-Help Guidebook: "A Spouse's Guide To Hiding Assets" to their series of books to fill a void in the market that is comprised of people who need to know how to protect their assets from from being taken away by the family law courts.

This guidebook is for anyone who has ever wanted to find out about how assets can be "repositioned," how assets can safely be protected and "cloaked," how you can locate them when someone else has them, and what methods you can employ to find them.

There are essentially five periods when you absolutely need to concern yourself with the planning of your asset protection: before marriage, during marriage, before a divorce, after a divorce, and when you are facing a contempt of court hearing.

Protecting your assets is primarily concerned with finding legal and relatively easy methods to implement that are readily available and cost effective. Surprisingly enough, you don't have to resort to exotic and complicated remedies like going offshore to do so. Your other concern
is being familiar with the basic laws that regulate what you are trying to do and to understanding how the courts view them.

Your goal is to make your assets "bulletproof" from the courts and as invisible as possible in order to keep them safe from outside attacks. You will find explained some entirely legitimate and commonly overlooked ways to protect your assets, some precautions to use, and very possibly, some considerations of which you weren't aware.

Link to book:
http://www.panama-publishing.com/books/ebook-hide-assets.htm

Panama Publishing's other self-help guidebooks were created specifically for the person who needs to face the family law court on a self-represented basis. With Florida used as an example, each of these guidebooks cover a specific topic such as:

How To Modify Your Alimony Payments
How To Lower Your Alimony Payments: Tips and Techniques
How To Defend Yourself In Contempt Of Court Hearings
How To Appeal In State Court Of Appeals

You can read more about these books at the following sites:
www.panama-publishing.com or www.alimonycentral.org

Even those readers who can afford a lawyer will find these books useful and informative. The guides are designed to help the parties involved in family law cases to learn about the process, procedures and paperwork involved with modifying alimony, contempt of court, and appeals. It can save them money by not having to have their lawyer spend expensive billable hours explaining things to them.

The material presented is given in an easy-to-understand layman's language and simplifies the details to where, in most instances, an individual might undertake their own case on a self-represented basis .

One of the unique facets about these guides is the ongoing and continuing support provided by the publisher's website for each book that, in effect, gives new and updated information to the
book's chapter contents as it arises. This website support insures that the data in the guide books is kept current without having to publish revised editions.

Article: When Wife Outearns Hubby

To give added strength to the fact that women's positions as the breadwinner for their families is changing, read this article written March 10, 2008 - by Dr. Helen Smith

"Times are changing and women are bringing in more and more of the household income, about 43% according to one study [this percentage seems awfully high to me, given that so many women work part time]. Although there are no official stats on this trend, wives are the chief breadwinners in one-third of all marriages, according to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics. In addition, women from ages 21 to 30 living in New York City and working full time made 117 percent of men’s wages, or a median wage of $35,653, and even more in Dallas, 120 percent." [Read more...]

This gives credence to the changing landscape of alimony and that, in the future, women will increasingly be ordered by the courts to paying it when they get divorced if the trend continues.

If it equality for women is a goal that is sought, then picking and choosing the items for which they will be treated as equals is not an option for them to select.

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Article: Be a Man...Don't Ask for Spousal Support

When men work hard to support their families, they're often accused of victimizing their poor wives who have to stay at home, chained to their children. The National Organization for Women and other feminist groups often argue that these men don't deserve joint custody after divorce because they "never took primary responsibility for raising their kids while they were married."

When divorce comes and men have to pay child support and alimony, they dare not complain, or they'll be accused of disrespecting their long-suffering ex-wives who sacrificed their careers for their families. [Read more....]

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Article: When Ex-husbands Get Alimony

Amy Williams, 38, never imagined she'd end up a single mother of two paying alimony to an ex-husband. Yet that's where the media executive found herself when her 10-year marriage dissolved in 2004.

During the early years of the relationship, Williams (whose name was changed here due to privacy concerns) supported her husband while he completed a doctorate in history. The assumption, she says, was that he would find a job in academia. That day never arrived. He was unable to find work but also didn't want to be the primary caregiver for their kids. So Williams paid for child care.

[Read more....]

Article: Manimony A Rising Trend

Definition: Manimony
"Money paid from the female spouse to the male spouse after legal separation or divorce as a result of the female making more money than her husband."

(CBS) As women out-earn their husbands in the workplace, many find they are footing the bill in divorce as well -- supporting their ex-spouses with alimony payments. Manimony is the new term for a growing trend.

When Jennifer Lopez and Cris Judd split after eight months of marriage, she paid him $14 million. Britney Spears picked up the tab for K-Fed's divorce attorney and then added another million for spousal support. Tom Arnold walked away from his marriage to Roseanne Barr with a cool $50 million.

"When the women are the breadwinners and have the bigger bank accounts, they can expect in an unhappy divorce for the husband to go straight for the checkbook," says Jeanne Wolf, West Coast editor of Parade magazine.

It's not just Hollywood wives who are paying alimony, or, manimony as it is being called. Women are now the top earners in a third of all marriages. [Read more...]

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Woman #2 - His Way Of Being Nasty

We were married 9 years. I only stayed home with my son for 6 weeks. I have always had the better job. At the most by only $10,000 more a year (he would work a lot of overtime to even get that close and I was salary)

I have a college degree and he barely graduated for HS. I have worked hard to get where I am with a major corporation in XXXX. He is just lazy.

HE informed me the other day that he lost $3,800 on a vacation he was going to take with my son because I have a restraining order on him and he says thats why he can't leave the country. $3,800...trip??? New boat? $25,000 check?

This alimony thing is only just a way of him being nasty and trying to get me once again for leaving him.. In his mind it isn't over...hence the retraining order!

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Article: "Alimony Goes Both Ways"

She didn't go into marriage contemplating divorce. She and her husband were young, well-educated and in love. He was a successful salesman; she'd just signed on with an accounting firm. So it didn't bother her that six years later, her career was flourishing, while her husband had begun bouncing from job to job. Nor did she balk at supporting him later, when he quit his job to battle his addiction to alcohol.

But when he stopped even looking for work, exhausted her insurance plan's coverage for substance abuse treatment, and began dipping into their savings account to finance his drug and alcohol binges, she began to consider getting out. Twelve years of marriage was adding up to a loss.

[Read more....]

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Article: Women Increasingly Paying Alimony

The picture of equality looks awfully strange to Kim Shamsky. The 47-year-old business owner pays her ex, a 65-year-old retired Major League Baseball player, thousands per month in temporary spousal support.

He's not seeking alimony to help pay for the kids' birthday parties, since they don't have children. Nor was he instrumental in building her business. They married seven years after she started a handful of staffing firms and amassed a small fortune on her own.

The daughter of a New York City taxi driver, Shamsky started her first staffing agency at age 27 with the help of a 21% loan. Not only was she able to make her first business profitable, but she's also worked furiously to ensure the success of all five businesses she's started since. Small wonder she is outraged at having to pay thousands of dollars a month to her ex.
[Read more....]

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Article: Some Ex-Wives Have To Pay 'Manimony'

(LifeWire) -- When Susan Harris divorced her husband of five and a half years last December, she got the apartment, extra closet space and the covers all to herself.

Her ex? He got $37,440. [Read more....]

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Article - When Women Pay Child Support: Court Allows Anne Heche to Skip a Payment

"You've never heard complaints about paying child support until it's a woman who has to pay it."--Seattle Family Law Attorney Lisa Scott

"Courts almost never allow men to get downward modifications on their child support. I represented a guy who earned $33,000 a month and paid $12,000 in child support. His company went bust and his income crashed down to zero.

"We went in and asked for a downward modification--not an elimination of child support, but a downward modification. The judge said 'no,' and told him 'tough luck--you're capable of earning $30,000 a month, so go do it. I don't care if you live under a highway underpass in the meantime, just pay your support as ordered.'"--Los Angeles family law attorney Adam Sacks

Anne Heche is having a hard time paying her child support and it's a good thing she's a woman, so she gets preferential treatment. Apparently Heche has had some career troubles and bad luck and the court is allowing her to skip an upcoming payment. The court is probably correct--I don't know the details--but were the genders reversed, I doubt the court would be so accommodating.

The full article is Anne Heche Doesn't Have to Pay for July (EOnline, 5/14/08).

I've previously discussed Anne Heche's divorce in A Fathers' Rights Perspective on Anne Heche's Divorce/Custody Settlement and A Crucial Point Missed in the Anne Heche/Coleman Laffoon Custody Battle. On the subject of women paying alimony, see From WomenPayingSupport.com--Be a Man...Don't Ask for Spousal Support.
[Read more....]

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Article - When Women Have To Pay Alimony

When it was the man who had to pay the alimony, no one seemed to be concerned with the injustices and burdens imposed. He was expected to take what was dished out to him and suffer in silence. Now it is the women who are treated in the same way by the courts and they are up in arms over it. It would seem that the saying “be careful what you wish for…you might get it” is apropos in this situation.
[Read more....]

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Article - When Ex-Husbands Get Alimony

A woman who is the primary breadwinner in her marriage could wind up paying support after a divorce. And sometimes she should, lawyers contend.

Amy Williams, 38, never imagined she'd end up a single mother of two paying alimony to an ex-husband. Yet that's where the media executive found herself when her 10-year marriage dissolved in 2004. [Read more ....]

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When Ex-Husbands Get Alimony

A woman who is the primary breadwinner in her marriage could wind up paying support after a divorce. And sometimes she should, lawyers contend.

Amy Williams, 38, never imagined she'd end up a single mother of two paying alimony to an ex-husband. Yet that's where the media executive found herself when her 10-year marriage dissolved in 2004. [Read more ....]

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Woman #1 - Not A Pretty Picture

Boy, do I have bad news for you. I'm a woman who IS paying spousal support. We both have college degrees, 8-year marriage.

Year 1 - Equal salaries.
Year 2 - I worked. He gets laid off.
Year 3 - I worked. He says he's "depressed" from being laid off and can't find a new job.
Year 4 - I work, have baby #1. He gets crappy sales job 3 months after baby is born.
Year 5 - I get promotion, transfer, discover I'm pregnant w/ baby #2. He leaves his job and stays home.
Year 6 - I continue working. Kids are in full-time day-care but he still sits on his lazy ass.
Year 7 to 9 - I continue to work to support my kids and try to get his butt out of my house. He refuses to get a job and won't move out until a judge kicks him out.

I first talked to a lawyer in January 2002. He ran the numbers and I left his office and nearly vomited in the parking lot. His advice was to wait and hope that the SOB would actually make good on his promise that he was serious about getting a job. Of course it was a lie. Why would he interrupt his all-expense-paid vacation?

I finally gave up waiting and filed in April 2004. He tried to get sole custody of our two daughters who were then 4 and 6. The judge granted him 50%. He sued me for spousal support and child support.

Every month I have to pay the SOB an obscene amount of money plus pay all child care costs. And since we're still married, I have to pay for and keep him on my dental and medical insurance. In addition he is going to come after me for the equity in the house (to which he did not contribute a penny), my retirement, his attorney's fees, and who knows what else.

I've worked hard ALL my life - been with one company for 23 years. He's been a free-lance kind of person with the exception of the job he had when we were engaged and for the first year of our marriage. He really scammed me. My daughters will never make THAT mistake. Background check! Background check! Background check!

Not a pretty picture is it?

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