"Divorced men should pay for their ex-wives fertility treatments"

4man · 2013-09-08T01:33:08+00:00

Empowered, capable women should pay their own way in life. Divorce means you are no longer married by definition, what was made one by a ceremony has been separated into two by law. Divorced women need to support themselves, not continue to look for hand outs from their ex.

Ted8367 · 2013-09-08T02:16:53+00:00

women should fight for their reproductive futures by saying: “My fertility is worth something.

Her fertility is the big thing on offer in the marriage; but she failed to deliver. Doesn't she owe her ex?

jpaul3211 · 2013-09-08T05:39:21+00:00

You are not owed a child in marriage. You aren't. This being said, if you want a child but can't afford freezing your eggs... SPERM BANKS EXIST FOR A REASON.

Denisius · 2013-09-08T10:25:45+00:00

Jesus Christ.

Remind me why men still get married in this day and age?

saint2e · 2013-09-08T02:05:25+00:00

As someone going through expensive fertility treatments right now, this is absolute bullshit.

SilencingNarrative · 2013-09-08T14:49:04+00:00

“When they got married, the expectation was they would start a family,” he told me. “Now she might not have the chance much longer.”

If this line of reasoning is valid, and assuming that he is divorcing her, then ...

when he married her, the expectation was that she would make him happy. She didn't. Let's assign that a monentary value to that lost opprotunity (say the costs of his wedding to his next wife) and hit her up for that.

And yet it makes sense. Legal experts like Kevin Noble Maillard of Syracuse University speculate that a woman’s missed opportunities to have a baby during a marriage could be viewed as a form of “sacrifice” for which she should be compensated (in much the same way that a woman who put her husband through law school could expect to be compensated if he divorced her just before he reaped the financial rewards of the degree). And it helps rectify one of life’s greatest biological injustices: that men but not women can typically start a family well into middle age and beyond.

This sounds like a move away from no-fault back to fault. If a woman sacrifices in some way for a marriage, then divorces her husband without showing bad faith on his part, then why should she be compensated for her sacrifices? He didn't pull the plug, she did. So she should have to find fault to even make such an argument. If arguments about who was at fault are now admissible when deciding how to divide assets, then there are a lot of arguments I would like to make along those lines. For example, if one spouse is caught cheating on the other, and the wronged spouse divorces them as a result, then the guilty party should walk away with a lot less than half of the assets (if they should even walk away with anything). Because they acted in bad faith. No one would dream of running any other sort of partnership that way, why should marriage be any different? Why would anyone take the risk of investing their youth and time and energy like that unless their legitimate interests were protected against such obvious breaches of good faith, should their partner turn on them at some future point?

To quote the language of the article:

And yet it makes sense.

The only reason someone can argue like this (the lawyer) is that it he won't be specifically called to account if his unfair logic takes root and substantially weakens marriage. If all sorts of opprotunity costs were applied to no-fault marriages like this, the long term effect would be for men and women to avoid marriage even more than they already are.

Roddy0608 · 2013-09-08T11:50:34+00:00

Am I the only one who thinks that 38 is already too late? How fucking selfish do you need to be to have a baby in your 40s? I'm 34 and am glad my parents had me early so that I'm not taking care of them in their 70s right now.

Ivan_Fackoff · 2013-09-08T09:50:16+00:00

This should be laughed out of the water. Why is this given any kind of credibility?

baskandpurr · 2013-09-08T11:57:04+00:00

I don't understand why people bother with all the pretense of "love". Marriage is a child production contract. Why not just write up legal contracts, with terms and penalties for both sides? Take all the uncertainty and emotion out of it.

FuriousMouse · 2013-09-08T05:24:23+00:00

How about if he divorced her BECAUSE he didn't want to have kids with her?

2013-09-08T07:59:26+00:00

"Then there’s the slippery slope: if a woman is to receive money to save her declining fertility, what’s to stop her from claiming to need breast implants or a face-lift because she used up her youth in the marriage?"

She just OHKO'd her ENTIRE argument right here. But she is too deluded / entitled to see it. Women receiving money simply because they are near menopause is just as stupid as women receiving their husbands money because they want a new car, a butler, plastic surgery, or any other luxury.

Pecanpig · 2013-09-08T02:55:05+00:00

Sure, let the ex-husband pay for the fertility treatment...long as he doesn't have to pay any alimony or lose half his shit.

salami_inferno · 2013-09-08T05:33:41+00:00

If I had to pay for my ex-wives fertility treatments then she better be putting MY sperm in her!

intensely_human · 2013-09-08T14:32:48+00:00

All of a sudden, fertility has been assigned a value. If the point of a divorce settlement is to take inventory of a couple’s joint life and divide the assets, then that commodity belongs on the negotiating table — alongside vacation time-shares and projected earnings from his and her M.B.A.’s.

This makes no sense, this idea that divorce is a time to "put everything on the table" and start haggling over it. And then calling it negotiation as if real-world negotiations involved stuff on a table getting split into two piles.

Negotiations aren't about separating up goods. Negotiations are about establishing the parameters of a new working relationship or contract, about defining the shape of future business.

When assets are on the table and people are parting ways, negotiation is too noble a word, and it would be properly referred to as "divvying up".

Using the word "negotiation" subtly implies that divorce is the setting up of a new relationship.

Which is to say you can never, ever get out of the relationship of marriage. You may transform it with a divorce into a more mercenary, unfriendly relationship based on wealth transfer, but you can never end it.

Divorce is supposed to be about ending a relationship. Instead, the way this article talks about it, divorce is about transitioning to a new relationship. Which is like saying "marriage is forever" which is the antithesis of why divorce was invented.

Meistermalkav · 2013-09-08T15:19:57+00:00

[permanently deleted]

dungone · 2013-09-09T15:16:22+00:00

She obviously wants to have kids and acknowledges that she only has a limited time to have them. Does she not realize how that undermines every other claim to a man's money that divorcing women ever make? I bet she doesn't. The cognitive dissonance is so strong with this woman that it might qualify as a perpetual motion machine.

since fertility treatments were part of the marriage, they should be considered part of the marital lifestyle, which should be maintained as much as possible post-divorce.

Hmm, so if a man spends thousands of dollars to pay for a woman to have a child, he should keep paying her post-divorce.

a woman who put her husband through law school could expect to be compensated if he divorced her just before he reaped the financial rewards of the degree

Right, so if a woman spends thousands of dollars to pay for a man to go to college, he should pay her back for it post-divorce.

Title	"Divorced men should pay for their ex-wives fertility treatments"
Author	porkchop_d_clown
Upvotes	135
Comments	96
Date	September 8, 2013 12:40 AM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1ly0xd/divorced_men_should_pay_for_their_exwives/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/divorced-men-should-pay-for-their-ex-wives.1164430 https://theredarchive.com/post/1164430

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