Divorce sucks. Especially when your lawyer tells you that you are likely going to come out with the short end of the stick. Even legal sophisticates, meaning those who have experience with courts and lawyers because of their business affairs, their real estate acquisitions or their estate planning, often gasp at the perceived immorality of divorce laws.
Clients frequently complain about the unfairness of divorce laws and the courts' reluctance to consider moral issues that are important to litigants, but irrelevant to the court.
Five of the most common complaints are:
1. My wife left me to move in with her boyfriend, why do I have to pay her spousal support?
In bygone years the courts only made spousal support orders where a recipient spouse was innocent of marital fault. When a wife was considered to be the cause of the marriage breakdown, no support was payable.
In the middle of the 20th century, divorce law began to evolve and currently many countries and states administer "no-fault" divorce. That means even if your husband or wife is a serial philanderer, or physically abusive, if they qualify for spousal support, they will likely get it. A long marriage results in a lengthy period of support and support theory is based on a lack of means of one spouse and the ability to pay of the other.
Imagine the dismay of a spouse with means when their husband or wife leaves them for another partner, moves in with that partner, and still receives support from their aggrieved left-behind spouse. The obvious question is "Why do I have to support her (or him) when she has chosen to move on with a new partner? Shouldn't she be supported by him?"
Sounds logical, however, the legal test for entitlement to support is based on "means and need". If the spouse moves in with a starving artist or someone on a disability pension, that spouse may still have need, despite their attachment to a new partner. Related to this complaint is the next one:
2. My ex spouse has remarried, why do I still have to pay spousal support?
Often long-divorced clients will call their family law attorneys bursting with good news. He or she will announce that after 15 years their ex has finally remarried and when can the spousal support payments end? The problem is that only if a former spouse agrees to the cessation of support, in writing of course, can payments be terminated.
Ex-spouses, however, are loath to give up what they have enjoyed for many years and most frequently the matter ends up in a courtroom. Twenty-five thousand dollars later and with a little luck, the support may be reduced, but not eliminated, because of the "means and needs" test.
3. Why does my ex get spousal support after my death?
In long marriages, spousal support is often ordered to be paid permanently or indefinitely. Some jurisdictions even order that support be secured by life insurance or binding on the estate of the payor upon his or her death.
What that means is that even after a paying spouse dies, the support lives on, paid from a life insurance policy or from the proceeds of the deceased payor's estate. The practical reality is that as spouses enter their "golden years" they generally live off their pensions or the proceeds of sale of their assets. Yes, the same pensions and assets that were already divided between the spouses at the time of divorce.
The alleged unfairness is that the deceased spouse's estate is reduced by the ongoing support obligation, to the detriment of the deceased spouse's heirs, and worst of all, it is paid from assets that were already divided equally. It's back to "means and need" again. If the recipient spouse has need and the payor spouse has means, support may continue after death.
4. Why am I still paying child support for my 24-year-old child?
Clients often ask why they are obliged to pay support for their children after the age of majority, and in particular, why they are ordered to fund an expensive university education? The argument usually centres around the fact that if the family was intact, decisions would be made that may include parental funding of school, but could also include children working part-time or applying for student loans.
The answer is simple. If divorced parents cannot agree on how to educate their adult children, then the court must step in. The laws in many countries provide that child support must be paid until the child obtains one post-secondary degree or diploma. Yes, even if the family, pre-marriage breakdown, had no intention to fund their children's schooling.
5. Why doesn't my ex spouse have to contribute to child support?
In many jurisdictions child support is governed by child support guidelines enacted by legislators. Many of these laws provide that a parent with primary residence of the children is entitled to child support based on the other parent's annual income. So far, so good. However, issues arise when the recipient parent's earnings outstrip the payor parent's earnings and yet the higher-earning parent is not obliged to make a financial contribution to support, so as to reduce the support obligation of the lower-earning parent.
The policy behind the law is that a primary resident parent's contribution is more than equal to monies paid for child support, for it is the primary parent who does the most work including transportation, socialization, schooling, medical and dental issues, psychological and emotional guidance and many other day-to-day matters for the care of children.
The common denominator in these scenarios is that if you and your spouse cannot come to an agreement on support, the court will intervene. Best to try to reach a compromise with your spouse then to risk the rigours of the law.
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Brahm D. Siegel: Ask a Divorce Lawyer
He called me saying since he lives in a different county and has to drive to 3 different school over 50 miles twice a day to take and pick up kids, he can't afford the gas.
The ex it seems married and excon jailed for armed robbery about 6 years after their divorce and has been letting the ex con control the child support money of over $2,000 a month.
But the Kicker is since she has custody and he is a Disabled Veteran with health problems he can't win custody nor can he even afford to sue for custody since they changed the laws requiring Mediation before any changes and they charge $250.00 an hour for that.
-It has no business deciding what a marriage is or isn't.
-It has no business doling out benefits and privileges based on marital status or a lack thereof.
-It has no business interfering with voluntary personal relationships between consenting adults in ANY way except insofar as the protection of life liberty and property are concerned.
The bottom line is that responsible adults should be allowed to decide for themselves what does or does not constitute a marriage. The governents only role should be in upholding civil contracts that have been voluntarily consented to and agreed upon in advance in the absence of force, fraud or the threat of such(especially by the state).
What if there is no formal binding agreement? Simple. The statutory laws regarding individual property would be applied!
Imagine the all of the time, money, debates, headaches, and hardships that could be avoided if people would just wake up and come to their senses about the basic tenets of human freedom with regards to these issues.
What if there is no formal binding agreement? Simple. The statutory laws regarding individual property would be applied!"
You do realize you've just described divorce, right?
As to the article, where is spousal support even the norm anymore, much less in all the convoluted scenarios described above? I'm a 2-state veteran of divorce, one New England state, and one Southern, and spousal support is exceedingly rare.
1) The kid isn't mine-
It's not uncommon for men to be forced to pay child support for kids that aren't biologically theirs. If the pregnancy was the result of an affair for example. If his name is on the birth certificate he's considered legally responsible, the woman can put down any name she wants and the courts have made contesting a birth certificate extremely difficult, as well as challenging paternity. Paternity fraud is rampant in the family court system, with something like ~30% of the tests coming back negative.
2) I was raped-
courts have ordered men who were underage at the time conception occured to pay child support even if the mother was over the age of consent, one court in Florida even ordered a man who's child was the result of his forcible rape as a teenager to pay support to his rapist.
3) We had a pre-existing agreement-
Courts routinely disregard portions of contracts such as pre-nuptial agreements that deal with child support and related matters. Also their have been cases of men who made donations to sperm banks being succesfully sued for child support.
4) I cant afford it-
many support awards are ridiculously high(~30-90% of pre-tax income). No matter the circumstance(bankruptcy,job loss,disability) your expected to come up with the payment no matter what, if you dont they charge interest and if you still dont they can imprison you indefinately, and they do.
Consenting adults should be able to enter binding civil contracts with regard to their relationships with anyone they choose.
Liberals often rally against religious observations and displays in the secular world and the greater society. Supporting government sanctioned marriage is complete hypocrisy.
Again, Marriage is a religious sacrament. Let’s do all we can to remove this religious sacrament from the oversight of the government.
I got state married once, and since we're both decent people--the divorce did not require lawyers, and I actually paid off his car so we'd be starting again on equal footing, financially.
Second time around--I decided not to involve the state, as they have no business in my personal life, so I'm married, but not according to the state. There are pros and cons to it, but it's the principled way to go about your private business.
Nice one sided system. I guess women are all angels. I can think of one I wish was.
The problem is that the law is wrong.
The main problem is that no one has come up with an alternative to "Code of Law" systems. There may not be one. In any case, as long as you have a statutory code of law it will be prone to abuse both in the form of people gaming the system and in the form of legislatures enacting laws for purposes other than the general welfare of a people. Current legalesse is a good example of an attempt to rectify this situation that actually wound up making the problem worse. By attempting to attach very spefic meanings to words and terms in order to prevent laws from being open to interpretation it actually made the law nearly impossible for the average person to understand many laws. Furthermore, by having many of these terms defined by statute it become possible for a legislature to define a term so that the meaning in not just different from general usage, but entirely contratictory.
No individual, against their will, should be forced into slavery for unwarranted reasons. Some good integral practices is all that's required.
http://codes.ohio.gov/orc/3105.12
Society may have laws,traditions and questions of morality etc.
But,the heart has no such rules and it ALWAYS will have the final say.