What's your ideal divorce, alimony, and child support law?

GayLubeOil · 2014-12-29T19:58:56+00:00

Couple must fight in the octagon for custody of their child. The first one to tap out may never see their child again. Octogon fights will be televized. All proceeds go to GayLubeOul. That would be ideal.

Denswend · 2014-12-29T13:11:29+00:00

Permit no fault divorce. If the couple decide to do a no fault divorce the following occurs : no alimony, no child support. Child custody is equally shared between partners, regardless of their circumstances. In other cases, alimony only happens if one party cannot financially support themselves, or does not have someone who would support them. No "keeping her standard of life" bullshit of 10,000 dollars a month stuff. Both parties are obligated to spend a percentage of money proportional to their earnings on the child/ren. This amount of money is not flat.

Keep the notion of marital rape (even though it is already covered with physical abuse, but it's more of symbolic than anything). If a man cannot keep the woman he married into him sexually, she should not be forced by law to have "duty sex". A wife's job is not to be a on-call sex slave.

Mandatory paternity tests. This way, men can be reassured and women avoid the mental anguish of being accused as cheaters by the person they love the most. If the child is not his, he can either acknowledge it, or gain a cause for divorce which will heavily bias him. Paternity fraud is to be treated as highest form of abuse a woman can give to a man.

Scrap the emotional abuse bullshit - only the most clear and objective "emotional" abuse is to be recognized - cheating (the extremity of cheating is paternity fraud, I hope that is clear). Only physical matters. Scrap the assumption that every man is aggressor. This would involve systematically purging all feminists, no matter how moderate, from the legal system. Alternative is forcing enough MRA's into the legal system.

A woman has ability to terminate pregnancy post-coitus. Allow abortion and make it as safe as possible. A man doesn't. Allow the "financial abortion". A man cannot force a woman not to have an abortion. But if a woman doesn't have an abortion, a man can choose if he will or won't acknowledge the child as his. If he does acknowledge it, he is obligated to support it as if they were in marriage and divorced/she got the custody, along with all the benefits (visitation rights, etc). If he doesn't acknowledge it, he forfeits his right as a father and does not have to support it. All further contact with the child is dependent only on the mother's whims. Within a marriage, if a woman gets pregnant while the husband doesn't want to, he can terminate the marriage unilaterally as if they had no fault divorce. Then he can choose to have financial abortion.

This is pretty much rough and unpolished. Criticism is welcome.

GridReXX · 2014-12-29T18:03:15+00:00

Financial abortion never works. I know women in my old neighborhood who never got a cent from their baby's fathers.

And now that child is an adult and doing well and going to grad school, the father wants to come in and reconnect.

It's bullshit and a slap in the face to the parent who raised and financially cared for the child.

My uncle is going through this. He refused to be involved in his daughter's life because he felt like her mom was this or that. Now his daughter just graduated from Brown and he's severely sick with a fatal illness and he wants her to forgive him. It's pathetic. I feel bad for my cousin.

nicethingyoucanthave · 2014-12-29T14:48:05+00:00

The difference between TRP and an advocacy group like for example MRA is that TRP deals with what is and doesn't necessarily take a stand on what should be. Blue pillers never seem to understand this. They constantly imagine TRP saying things like, "women need to XYZ" (the subtext being, if only women would do that, then my life would be easier).

What TRP actually does is to say, "here's the way the world is - here are some things that men and women respond to - here are some things that I can do or change about myself in order to make my own life better." What MRA does is to say, "this thing (divorce, alimony, etc) is unfair to men - we want to change it"

As a TRPer, I don't care if you keep, scrap, or change any laws. I will make my own path through life no matter what you do. If I decide the divorce and alimony constitutes an undue risk to me, then I wont get married. I wont get married, and I also wont wine about it. It is what it is.

However, for the purpose of discussion, I can step out of that for a moment and offer some analysis if you like:

(1) We need to decide if marriage is important to us, as a society.

If you want to say that the purpose of marriage is to form a single cohesive team for the purpose of raising children, then entering into a marriage and having kids should be seen as taking on responsibility, and we should disincentivize divorce and out-of-wedlock childbirth. We might do that by eliminating no-fault divorce, essentially punishing the person who abdicates his responsibility.

The underlying problem of course is that American culture (and to a lesser degree, all of the West) is reticent to tell anyone what they should do. "I'm okay, you're okay, everything is okay" - we aren't going to tell people, particularly women, that they were supposed to get married and stay married, and we aren't going to punish them for getting divorce.

So in practice, we can only pay lip service to the idea that marriage is important to us. Every leader (political, religious, or otherwise) says it's important, but none of them actually mean it, because none of them are willing to enforce it. So in my view, we should just get rid of marriage altogether. At this point, it's just a pleasant fiction.

...actually, it's worse than that because when people inevitably walk away from it, they end up hating each other. Surely we could consciously design a better system than this. Imagine a society where the expectation right from the start was that your love life would be separate from your family life. This is the de facto state anyway after you get divorced (which you will). You'll date again and you'll proclaim "my kids come first you got a problem with that??" - the only difference between what I suggest and what will actually happen to most women is that I'm suggesting a way for you to not hate the mother or father of your children.

(2) Can anyone actually articulate the reason for alimony?

I can. It's the most red pill thing ever.

See, the deal that men would like to make with women is this: "I (male) want sex with a hot young woman" Or if you prefer this phrasing: "I would like to purchase reproductive access to a woman during the most fertile time of her life." A core belief in TRP is that all relationships are exchanges of value, so how do men pay for this thing they want? Like this: "...and in exchange I promise I will make resources available to you, and I will continue to do that long after your peak fertile period has passed."

That's the deal that men would like to make. Long-term support in exchange for hot hot sex (or children, if you prefer to think of it that way).

This is a fair deal for both parties, but the problem for women is that it only really pays off years down the road. It's a fair deal for women only if males keep their word. If society allowed a man to offer this deal, and then renig on it when his wife was 50 so that he could "upgrade" to a younger woman, his wife would be seriously fucked over.

Alimony is a guarantee that a man will keep his word, and it's perfectly reasonable that a 20-something woman who married and was faithful to a man should get alimony if they divorce at 50. And I bet that even red pill guys would agree with alimony under those circumstances. Where they disagree and dislike the idea of alimony is when it's given to women who don't fit that description - they weren't faithful, they weren't married very long, that sort of thing.

(3) Child support is not (currently) about the child.

Hopefully, that will ruffle some jimmies, because "child support is for the child!!" is an oft-repeated lie. Most men paying child support hate it, but very few men hate their children. As a rule, fathers love their children. As a rule, a father will give even his own life to protect and provide for his children.

What men don't like is that child support funds go not to their children, but to a woman they no longer particularly like, who invariably spends that money on herself.

If you really believe that child support is for the child, then you would support a system that guarantees the money is spent on the child - or at least makes some attempt to ensure that's the case. The real problem right now is that we don't even make an attempt to do that.

The infrastructure for such a system is already in place. I can go to the grocery store and buy a bunch of stuff, and then swipe my EBT card (or WIC or whatever it's called) and the computer will say, "cool, you just paid for some of this stuff, but this bottle of wine isn't eligible so you'll need to pay for that separately." And then I would pay cash. It's literally that easy.

So all we need to do is pay child support not directly to the parent but instead into an account in the child's name. Each parent has a debit card that uses the account. If the account runs low, the parents go back to court and the court can see the actual reason - "parent X is going out for pizza too often" or whatever.

Computers could do this very easily and very easily categorize all the spending. It wont matter that the mother invariably spends more, because it'll be easy to see that the bought all the child's clothes.

Whatever is left in the account when the child turns 18 belongs to the child.

What I've suggested is totally workable. Any objections you bring up will be easily handled. I have suggested no reduction in a father's obligation to pay. So if child support is really about the child, the same money is there, for the child. I predict that males will love this idea, but women will hate it - and in spite of what they say, they actually hate it because they know full well that while child support benefits the child, it is not for the child.

Vornnash · 2014-12-29T15:37:48+00:00

Financial abortion is warranted given uneven access to birth control and post-coitus abortion access. Plus, I personally know women who have allowed themselves to get pregnant in order to ensnare a guy. Women are actually more likely to use violence in a relationship, so I expect such women to use what's at their disposal to get what they want.

meehan666 · 2014-12-29T17:40:12+00:00

Ideally, government gets out of the business of marriage regulation completely. Leave marriages to being personal or religious things, but not recognized by the state at all.

tomatostew · 2014-12-29T22:22:55+00:00

Financial abortion is allowed in cases where the mother wants to keep the baby and the father doesn't. If the father isn't present or can't be contacted it should be assumed that he'll be financially aborting so the woman can make her own choices promptly.
Child custody is 50/50 by default unless there are special circumstances (as in, mom's house is 5 minutes away from school, dad's house is 2 hours away) where alternative arrangements might be preferable. Custody should be worked out among parents. In cases where one parent chooses no custody, then they pay child support unless they have no or poverty level income.
Paternity testing is mandatory to get the father's name on the birth certificate. No opt-out available, it's mandatory. If it were opt-out, too many women would feel insulted if their husbands didn't opt-out. Making it mandatory means it can be done without the father having to show anything that might be interpreted as lack of trust. I think it's more about peace of mind than lack of trust in the first place, but a lot of women probably don't.
Alimony is for cases where the higher-earning party is at fault in the divorce or initiates the divorce AND the lower earning party has sacrificed earning potential in order to care for household, children, or other unpaid tasks.
Make divorce harder to get. I'm a little conflicted on this one because I love me some freedom, but studies have shown that people are generally happier with what they have and more apt to work problems out instead of quitting if they don't have too many other easy options in front of them. Divorce should be for cases where one spouse is abusive, cheating, turns out to be a criminal, etc. not just boredom or lost interest. I guess there should still be some type of no fault divorce, but it should either be a mutually agreed upon 50/50 split of current assets or the initiating party would take the bigger hit in terms of assets.

ECoast_Man · 2014-12-29T23:25:44+00:00

I have not read enough into this area, and the laws differ significantly between jurisdictions.

I live in in no fault divorce. Not entirely sold on that notion, in the sense that whether people agree or not, the cheater is at fault whether recognized by law or otherwise. So I am a little troubled by the legal fiction of no fault divorce. I am 50 50 on this point. I also don't see why fault and no fault couldn't go exist, in the sense that different consequences may result depending on what happened. But I digress.

Child support- I'm actually not radically contrary to the current system which is based on ability to pay. However, I dislike the lack of transparency where that money can be spent on gambling, or carousel trips to Vegas or whatever.

Custody- I think it is said to begin with 50 50 as a starting point, but the outcomes don't seem to demonstrate that. However, courts need to be far more cut throat in cutting out poor (meaning shitty, not necessarily financially) parents. I've seen an alcoholic mother keep custody, despite repeatedly missing court dates and picking up the kid. They should be removed entirely for a brief period to get their act together. Not punitively, but judge mom and dad needs to lay the hammer down more against such fuckery.

Alimony- requires a higher minimum time for marriage (10 years) before it becomes automatic, then shift burden to the payee to prove why he or she is deservant of anything and how much, if they have been together for less than 10 years.

tomatostew · 2014-12-29T15:13:20+00:00

I don't claim to have all the answers, but it's obvious that the current laws aren't as effective. Every law has unintended consequences, but it's important that they are as fair as possible to the involved parties.

Divorce and Alimony: Allow divorce for any reason to anyone, not because marriage is an unimportant agreement, but because it is unjust to keep people together if one or both do not want to be. That being said, I believe that current alimony rules are unsound. A no fault divorce could allow the parties to separate without the messiness of alimony arguments; however, if a spouse does not have any income at the time of divorce, small payments could be required until that spouse finds a job. To avoid taking advantage of alimony in a divorce with "fault", monthly payments would be kept reasonable and expire after a few years at most. A rich person should not have to pay a less wealthy ex-spouse thousands of dollars per month because they had grown accustomed to the "lifestyle".

Children: kids are where this gets tough because, as a child of divorce, i have seen and experienced the difficulties.

First, there needs to be a regulated test of paternity (not because all women are liars) just to cover the bases because things happen. It would not be difficult to do the test at the hospital when the child is born.

Once paternity is settled, we can get to the rough part with child support. It takes two people to create a child so it's up to both people as individuals (and together) to use birth control. Yes people lie: "yeah i'm on the pill/ yeah i'll wear a condom". In the end, when there is sex, there's a chance of pregnancy.

If the woman becomes pregnant it is her choice to have an abortion or to take the pregnancy to term. The father can neither stop her nor force her to terminate for as long as the law recognizes the fetus to be a part of her body. If she chooses to have the baby both parents have the option to claim the child. If neither wants the kid, they put it up for adoption. If both want to raise it, they raise it equally either together or separately. It gets tricky when only one parent wants to keep it. The parent that wants to raise the child can receive full custody and the other parent can choose the degree to which they want to be present in the child's life. If they want nothing to do with the child and agree to forfeit rights to them they would be required to pay a smaller amount of child support, either in a lump sum, or certain payments over time. The amount of money would grow with the amount of rights the other parent wants to the child. If later they change their mind and want more rights, they need to pay up. You can't be there for the fun and games without paying for the diapers and clothes. This is the important part. Once there is a child, it's about them and their well-being and not about the parents.

At this point I've lost my train of thought. I recognize this is vague and missing elements. Please reply with your ideas or for clarification

Edit: I forgot to answer the last part of the question. I think this will impact society by creating more fair and equal laws. It's not about men's rights vs women's rights. It's about people and improving the fairness of their rights.

fiat_lux_ · 2014-12-29T16:20:32+00:00

A couple of ideas:

Strict enforcement of the American rule system across all states (as opposed to Spanish rule). I.e. Interest, rent, dividends, royalties, and other forms of income made from separate assets/property (e.g. Pre-marriage property) are considered separate property. To count it as community property is discounting the costs and losses incurred by inflation, maintenance, DRIPs, etc.
Currently many states set alimony to close to 50% of post tax income. After taxes the earning divorcee gets as much as the non-earning one. A system like that completely shits on the time the earning divorcee wastes making that money. Ideally, the non-earning divorcee would be working just as hard as the earning one trying get job training or learning to invest or make money off of what assets she got from the split and subsequent divvying of community assets. In reality, she could do whatever she wanted. The non-earning divorcee needs to be incentivized to become an ordinary productive member of society again.

A simple idea would just be to set the marker lower. Maybe 30-40%. Just not 50% (maybe even allow it just for the first year, and drop slowly from there). Whatever it is, we need to give incentive to these people somehow to get back to work. If we allow their lifestyle to be as good as it was predivorce (financially speaking) without any effort on their part, then we shouldn't be surprised when they put in no effort to become productive and end up being perpetual dependents of the state.

curomo · 2014-12-29T17:25:01+00:00

My ex wanted me to pay for cheerleading, which I didn't approve of (risky sport, not a particularly healthy culture).

I proposed an increase to child support instead.

My proposal was to calculate all the annual costs for the children food, clothing, school supplies, medicine, extra-circulars, cell-phones, child-care, everything I could think of - and I had a woman friend help me account for EVERYTHING we could come up with. We were thorough in our research, I had pricing data on EVERYTHING, clothes getting replaced every 3 months, actual school supply lists and pricing all of. However, fixed costs that were symmetrical cancelled out - so the cost of have a 3 bedroom house was something we both were expected to provide, so I figured that if I'm providing one and she's providing one, neither of us owed the other to provide that. So housing, family-size car, etc fell into this category

That all worked out setting the costs of 2 kids getting being just under $900/mo; I proposed that we should each be responsible for 1/2 of the $700, and I offered to round that up to an even $500.

Naturally she went ballistic, rejected my proposal and had the AG sue me for more money.

I ended up paying $950. My now ex has a $1500 pair of boots - I only know because she asked me to be sure that our eldest got them in case my ex didn't survive a surgery. She travels to Europe several times a year, and domestically at least one week a month, but had no steady income. Meanwhile, my kids rarely get new clothes, but do get to eat out more often than not.

Anyway, that's a long rant, but it's cathartic to vent... on to the answer: there are 2 fundamental flaws with current child support:

AG has no stake in assuring that the money is appropriate or goes to the welfare kids.
If a couple stays married and the breadwinner's income is reduced, then the family has to tighten up their belts; but once child support is set, it's nearly impossible to adjust down. For instance, if I decided my work was too dangerous or just uninteresting, as a married man, I could do something about it. But as a divorcee paying childsupport, I'm basically bonded to my job and cannot take much risk in finding better work or something that is more fulfilling (unless it happens to pay more).

solutions:

more realistic child support targets (they're much too high, we shouldn't be incentivizing divorce, which the current system does (we shouldn't be locking people into a bad situation either, but I think getting bored in a relationships and getting a paid ticket to leave is more common than abusive relationships are)
no more assuming that the mother is the best place for the children. kids should go to fathers approximately 50% of the time.

[deleted] · 2014-12-29T15:57:17+00:00

Two words: financial abortion.

Denswend · 2014-12-29T15:49:24+00:00

Zero state assessed or court ordered child support without marriage. Ever, for any reason. Child support outside marriage ONLY if the father voluntarily signs a document with an attorney present binding himself to pay child support . This can be enforced at law
Allow no-fault divorce with the caveat that the filing party has to leave with nothing but the splitting of legally jointly titled property, no inchoate "marital assets". The filing party also cannot get custody of the kids if the non-filing party wants them, period. In the case the filing party leaves the marriage and doesn't get the kids THEY have to pay child support to the non-filing party. No alimony for the no-fault filer
Alimony only in the case of a fault based divorce, assessed only if the party to PAY the alimony is held to be at fault for one of the traditional grounds of divorce, to be determined by a court. Cruelty, abandonment, alienation of affections(refusal of sex), adultery, mental illness etc. Alimony to be severely tailored to the payees circumstances and job prospects, and NEED, not based on keeping the wife in "the circumstances she was accustomed to". No bonus for divorcing a wealthy man.
Child support assessed by the court must be based in the true costs of raising a child, not the expenses of raising a child "to a certain standard of living", expenditure accounts should have to be provided to the paying party, costs should have to be reasonable and not based on "but if we were still married to you we'd be rich!". There should be no "bonus" for divorcing a wealthy man. Anything the paying parent pays for voluntarily outside the child support agreement/order should be deducted from the payment. Child support should cease to be covert spousal support

atheist4thecause · 2014-12-29T17:38:22+00:00

Before I even start, allow me to say that the problems we face are not just legislative problems. Many of the problems are both judicial and executive, which can't necessarily be fixed legislatively.

Divorce: The laws can largely stay the same, but the judicial interpretations need to change. It's not fair to go into the case with the idea that the kids need to go with the mother, and then from there everything gets justified as being for the kids. The mother needs the house for the kids, the mother needs money for the kids, etc.

Alimony: Abolish it. Alimony keeps one person dependent on the other person, and after divorce it's best for both sides to move on from each other and make new lives. I do understand some alimony, such as in cases where one person works while the other goes to school, and then when they graduate the leave the other person who made all the sacrifice. I don't think we need alimony to even out this sacrifice, however, we can just even it out with the value of what each side gets out of divorce.

Child Support: I think capping child support makes the most sense. Warren Sapp, an NFL football player, was behind in child support around $500,000. Why in the world should any person ever have to pay over $500,000 for their HALF of supporting the child? The government should come up with a number and cap child support at that number. Also, men who have been raped shouldn't have to pay child support to their rapist.

I wish you would've split these 3 issues into 3 groups, because it's hard to get in depth on any one, especially when you expect us to explain how each impacts 3 different types of rights. You're asking for too much, and we could write 50 page papers on what you are asking for. So here's my summary.

Title	What's your ideal divorce, alimony, and child support law?
Author	visamastercard
Upvotes	10
Comments	75
Date	December 29, 2014 11:18 AM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/PurplePillDebate
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/PurplePillDebate/comments/2qpc01/whats_your_ideal_divorce_alimony_and_child/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/PurplePillDebate/whats-your-ideal-divorce-alimony-and-child-support.283968 https://theredarchive.com/post/283968

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