Marriage is only a moneymaker in the USA for the vulture divorce lawyers, courts and the recipient spouse-- since more than 50% of US marriages dissolve in divorce (near highest in the world), a sizable majority of productive, skilled, well-earning Americans will be utterly wiped out by where marriage leads. US family courts are uniquely vicious and ruinous, as the United States is one of the only countries in the world to still demand lifetime alimony (one of the few to assign alimony at all, on top of child support and other state-mandated payments).

And in a sneaky legal sleight-of-hand, alimony is generally assigned by looking at a peak earnings year that isn't sustainable in the future. So if your salary drops, you lose a job, get sick, your business slumps and you can't make the out-of-control alimony payments-- YOU GET SENT TO PRISON! Happens a lot, just one example: http://bloom.bg/1JlsehM and another http://bit.ly/1zH6Fgu (update here: http://bit.ly/1o5jYYY ). I've seen this personally, two good friends and very productive, law-abiding Americans-- one a professional, one a successful entrepreneur employing dozens-- got socked with out-of-control alimony payments, had trouble in the recession, basically got bankrupted by the support payments and got sent off to jail.

The problem is that the US, and the Anglo legal-based countries in general (including Britain, Australia and Canada), all have legal systems that allow and encourage parasitic profiteering by not only the attorneys and claimants, but also by the courts and the states themselves. That's right, the divorce courts (judges, officials, court overhead) and even state-associated funds get a sizable chunk of parasitic profits off the divorce process, so US family courts have every reason in the world to make divorce crazily common, expensive, awful and financially ruinous to a spouse with good earnings, savings and assets. They can extract a lot of money, and with permanently-demanded alimony, they can in effect demand a massive supertax on a well-earning and well-saving American with lots of assets to seize. The same goes for the other Anglo legal-based countries-- which also have crazily high divorce rates and ruinous proceedings for people caught in divorce-- though not quite to the same crazy level as the US. And remember, divorce in the US is no-fault, so even if a spouse wants to kick you out to be with a lover-- if you're the higher-earner, you'll be the one losing the house, the car, the kids and your livelihood (with the alimony costs).

Other countries simply aren't like this. Whether France or the Benelux, Italy, Nordics, Germany, Spain, South America (both Brazil and places like Chile or Argentina), or eastern Asia (China, Korea, Japan), all with wildly different cultures-- they discourage divorce, block the lawyers and courts from making money from it (so less reason to push it), use mediation and cooling-off periods, ensure jointly-held custody, refuse community property (whoever's earned the money keeps it, with the other spouse given occupational support to make their own money), and above all, they staunchly disallow alimony in any form. Even in the Nordic countries, they don't allow alimony-- if you're going to have equality, if means that both spouses have to earn their own money without alimony parasitism.

So the up-shot is that if you're a hard-working, productive, well-earning American, or entrepreneurial, skilled, with a good education, savings and assets, you have 2 stark choices:

  1. Don't get married in the United States-- don't even think about it, you're setting yourself up for disaster. (And no, pre-nups will not help you much-- they're constantly tossed out, and having a kid out of wedlock makes you a "common-law partner" and you'll still be hit by alimony.)

  2. Emigrate to a saner country on this issue-- that is, any of the countries above (outside of Australia, Britain or Canada). Yeah, it means you'll have to learn a language and get settled somewhere else, but that's a minor inconvenience it's well worth it. Especially since most of these other countries also have much more affordable healthcare and college tuition (esp. in Europe outside the UK, where it's mostly fully taken care of), there are kinds of other advantages, too. You have all kinds of choices (and remember, you can go anywhere in Europe once you get residency in a single country, ex. you can move to France or Germany if you first get residency in an easier place like Hungary, Croatia or Greece).

Incredible that good, productive Americans are being forced to do this, but this is the price of ongoing corruption and a parasitic court system. Either not marrying at all or emigrating is essential to protecting all your hard work and assets.