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....]

###

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

-30-

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.

-30-

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....]

-30-