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.

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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.

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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.
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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.
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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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