Why I Resent the Term "Alimony" | But Love the Money

eaton80 · 2015-08-07T14:42:20+00:00

Alimony, "my honestly and hard earned dividend from over two decades of solid investments." Where is his payout for his over two decades of solid investments? What did his hard work get him?

jak_22 · 2015-08-07T15:23:47+00:00

But it was when one of our teenage boys recently said to me "Pappa works hard; he supports all of us,"

This is the naked truth, lady. You yourself stated that the payments from your ex puts food on your table.

Ultramegasaurus · 2015-08-07T16:46:57+00:00

The proper term should be "reparation payment". Divorce is essentially treated like a post-war arrangement, with the man being Germany almost every time.

my_name_is_gato · 2015-08-07T17:55:46+00:00

Wow, this is sad. She blatantly thinks she is entitled to live off of her ex and has the gall to want a better word for it? She should be ashamed to be taking his money.

mochacola · 2015-08-07T15:13:36+00:00

I agree with her on dropping "alimony" and go for "severance package". But, that should mean, whoever severed the marriage has to pay.

mariox19 · 2015-08-07T15:56:12+00:00

developing a business together

She is very light on the details here, and I have to wonder why. I have no problem if she was truly involved with the development of the business—even if she didn't draw an actual salary—but there is no elaboration from her. If at the beginning of the relationship she and her husband had discussed raising a family at the beginning and decided, together, that she put her career on hold, I would be sympathetic to her being granted some "rehabilitation." But she makes no mention of that.

What she does mention is that she essentially wants the luxury to pursue a speculative and mostly unremunerative career—she wants to work as a professor's assistant and try her hand as a writer. Well, those college teaching jobs are all sewed up, and becoming a writer is like becoming an actor or something. It's largely a pipe dream. It's definitely not something any responsible person with three kids pursues.

But, here's the best part:

I say let's come up with a new term for alimony that makes the recipient feel less like a charity case and more like a free agent paying her/his bills with returns from wise and hard earned investment.

As far as I can gather, from the essay of this particular "writer," her only "investment" was picking an ambitious and hard working man to marry.

victorymonk · 2015-08-07T18:04:13+00:00

I say let's come up with a new term for alimony that makes the recipient feel less like a charity case and more like a free agent paying her/his bills with returns from wise and hard earned investment.

The OP is right. She resents the term, not free money. Though I agree with one thing: sitting at home for 20 years and living off of her husband is wise investment. For her. For him it was nothing but an awful gamble with awful odds.

Manheiser_Busch · 2015-08-07T18:11:23+00:00

"But a comment like that doesn't fall easy on a writer and teacher's ears, or heart, as if the work I do now, not to mention did while married and also running the household, is a walk in the park."

Reality One: your "work" pays shit, and the reason it pays shit is because so few people in the market value it. Convince yourself of your own internal value on your own time, but in the meantime, that house had to get paid for, those cars had to get paid for, those kids had to get put through school, those lunches had to get bought, those bills had to get paid, etc. If you aren't contributing to the money in any appreciable fashion, then your other option is to reduce costs. Either contributes. Writing on the side and teaching on the side for peanuts does neither.

Reality Two: running a household isn't rocket science. It's scheduling and basic math. Convince yourself that this is extraordinary work, if you want, but your "job" was essentially saving the household money by making it so that it didn't have to pay someone minimum wage or close to it to do those jobs. So, pat yourself on the back for freeing up $7-8 bucks an hour while you're home and making about that when you're off working, but that's not an "investment", that's a cop out. When grade school age kids can do most of those chores, it's not hard work or mentally challenging. It's tedious, and dreary, and boring as shit, but it's not hard.

If you had any real ambition or talent, you would have put it to work, earned some market value well above that minimum wage low bar, and would have paid someone to do the cleaning and lunches. You CHOSE to mail it in, stay home, and count on dear old Dad to pay for everything while you played at a couple of feel good careers that pay almost nothing. Alimony just means you get to put off being a real adult for a bit longer, which is why you still value it. Anyone with any pride would have made it so alimony was superfluous as quickly after that divorce as possible.

MonkeyCB · 2015-08-08T00:48:17+00:00

This cunt was supported for 23 years, and then she deems that an "investment". Let me ask you this, she admits to having fully grown sons who are in college, so what the fuck has she been doing since they started going to school 6-8 hours a day? Assuming all of her kids just entered college and haven't been there god knows how long, that's about 11-12 years of her doing fuckall. And now she's demanding payment for being supported by someone and doing jack shit.

ClemsonPoker · 2015-08-08T02:18:23+00:00

Jesus Christ. HuffPo has a Divorce section?

dangerousopinions · 2015-08-08T09:29:38+00:00

I was, after all, C.E.O of The Lichtenstein Family LLC, a rather large household consisting of a wife (me), a husband, three children, two dogs, a ginormous house, two cars and an above average sized yard. The third floor of our house was originally built for "the help," back in the day when someone living in this size house would typically have a cook, a nanny, a gardener, a couple of servants, and a driver.

Sounds really tough. How does she even manage having all this wealth? Poor people have no idea how difficult it can be to have a massive house and spacious yard. /s

The really fucked up part about this comment is that it seems to have not occurred to her that making these statements is incredibly entitled and ignorant.

Il128 · 2015-08-07T21:06:59+00:00

But it was when one of our teenage boys recently said to me "Pappa works hard; he supports all of us," that I felt compelled to make a statement. If nothing else, for my boys: the next generation. Yes, their dad owns a business and that is hard work, no question about it. But a comment like that doesn't fall easy on a writer and teacher's ears, or heart, as if the work I do now, not to mention did while married and also running the household, is a walk in the park. Is not hard. A quarter century dedicated to creating and keeping a home, developing a business together and raising a family was the most challenging work of my life. I invested dearly in this enterprise, and I loved it. It was gratifying and exhausting. (I was raised as a latch-key kid with a career mom, so staying home with the kids while they were young felt like a privilege to me.) Pursuing an advanced degree when the kids got to middle school felt almost self-indulgent - I "worked" in the library all day -and I got to exist in my head for 8 hours a day, sometimes more, away from the chaos, unpredictability and physical labor of running our family and home. Of course, with mom gone all day, too, forces had to be hired to mind the gap.

She had a God damned maid... And what does her x husband get? Slavery. Fuck feminist!

MagicGin · 2015-08-07T23:22:44+00:00

earned dividend from over two decades of solid investments.

That's what the divorce payout was.

If he worked and your effort enabled his work, then the divorce compensated you with a percentage of his earnings.

No part of your work entitles him for his future earnings--you stepped out of a business relationship early and sold your "stock". Why would you get more after the fact?

dungone · 2015-08-07T23:11:21+00:00

historically has had as its purpose the continued nourishment of the divorced wife, presumed to be lacking the ability to support herself.

There's nothing to presume here, is there? The woman admits she lacks the ability to support herself.

In fact, she is completely deluded in her bizarre belief that she should be able to get any job she pleases and get paid whatever she sees fit, or else a man should have to give her money. There is a better word for this - it's called slavery.

And what was her "investment" in the marriage, again? She used her husband's money to get bullshit degrees while maids and nannies raised the kids. What did he get out of it?

HORSEBLUES · 2015-08-08T00:57:35+00:00

She's like Skyler White except more bitchy.

full_control · 2015-08-08T16:37:58+00:00

It would be fun to ask this woman a hypothetical: imagine your husband made very little money. This required you to work doubletime to stretch the money out as far as it could go, cleverly finding every way to save a little more. Would you be demanding equal credit for your husband if you son said: "Mommy works hard to keep the house together."?

AntonySinz · 2015-08-08T19:17:10+00:00

What a cunt.

Title	Why I Resent the Term "Alimony" \| But Love the Money
Author	eaton80
Upvotes	43
Comments	34
Date	August 7, 2015 2:35 PM UTC (10 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/3g4ti2/why_i_resent_the_term_alimony_but_love_the_money/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/why-i-resent-the-term-alimony-but-love-the-money.973786 https://theredarchive.com/post/973786

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