Spousal Maintenance (AKA Alimony) has always been a curious thing to me. When I first started practicing Family Law, I immediately noticed the dissonance between the pervasive feminist rhetoric of the “Strong Independent Woman” and a woman feeling entitled to her ex-husband’s money after the marriage. Let’s be honest, women always feel entitled to the money of the man they are dating. Spousal Maintenance strikes hard at the heart of the “Strong Independent Woman” myth because many women that claim to be independent are in fact receiving Child Support and Spousal Maintenance from their ex-husbands. When you try to reconcile the Spousal Maintenance laws in this country along with Feminism and the current status of women, you can’t help but see the unfair advantage that women receive in our family court system.
Like many modern plagues of men, the problem with Spousal Maintenance originates from women’s change in status after the Sexual Revolution while other social and legal constructs stayed the same. Spousal Maintenance was created at a time when women were second-class citizens that could not vote, own property, or obtain lucrative employment. Marriage was originally created as a man’s legal possessory right to a woman, and the man had a responsibility to take care of the woman that he owned. In effect, a woman’s father “passed” the responsibility of financially supporting his daughter to the husband at the time of marriage. So when divorce occurred, the woman would be destitute if her ex-husband did not financially support her. Thus, Spousal Maintenance and Child Support were created to financially assist women after divorce and prevent the State from having to assist her. However, this system of Spousal Maintenance only made sense when women were second-class citizens. Spousal Maintenance is now obsolete in modern times when women have all the rights of men and an earning capability that is often higher than men.
Most of Family Law is intentionally, and uniquely, simple and straight-forward when compared to other areas of law. Lawyers, judges, politicians and legislators intentionally make the law confusing and difficult to understand to ensure job security and the continuance of the “lawyer class”. If the law and navigating the court system were easy to understand, no one would need to pay and hire lawyers. However, Family Law is intentionally made simple because the State wants divorces and custody matters to be resolved quickly so that our court system is not inundated with frivolous litigation.
However, the area of Spousal Maintenance is an exception to this rule. There are no juries in Family Law, which gives the judge absolute power and control over the Spousal Maintenance decision. How judges decide Spousal Maintenance also controls divorce settlements outside of Court, because the lawyers know how the judge would rule. In the State I practiced law in, the Spousal Maintenance statute has 18 factors the judge is supposed to consider when ruling on the amount of money and length of time of a Spousal Maintenance order. But in reality, Family Law judges have absolute power with no supervision or consequences for making horrible, biased, stupid decisions. When a judge makes the wrong decision, there is no supervisor or manager to complain to and no governing body above him that will easily correct his mistake. There are pseudo-governing bodies that are supposed to oversee judges, but these bodies consist of other judges, and it is extremely rare for a judge’s lifelong appointment to be cut short. For example, in the State I practiced law in, this governing body has only ousted one judge in the last 50 years. The only way a litigant can fix a judge’s bad decision is to file an appeal, and appeals lawyers start with $20,000 retainers, which means that 99% of the population can’t afford an appeal. Appeals are also very complicated, and a litigant absolutely needs a lawyer to file and win one. Even if a litigant can afford an appeals lawyer, the chance of winning an appeal is very low. Even if you win the appeal, the case goes back to the same judge to make a decision on the same facts. Judges all think they are God incarnate, and having a judge admit a mistake or change their ruling is unheard of.
Spousal Maintenance is supposed to be “rehabilitative”. Theoretically, women that “sacrificed” their ability to pursue a career by staying at home and raising the kid’s during the marriage should receive a minimum amount of financial support from their husbands for a temporary amount of time while they establish a career for themselves after marriage. Spousal Maintenance is supposed to give women just enough money so they can get a degree, seek training, and live while they are becoming self-sufficient. This may have made sense when women were second-class citizens and their job and earning prospects were much worse than men. However, times have changed and Spousal Maintenance has stayed the same, causing a system where the State steals a man’s income and awards it to his ex-wife.
In Modern times, women have equal or greater earning and career potential when compared to men. Women love to perpetually complain that men still make more money than them, but this is just not true. One of Robert Greene’s most important laws of power is that the powerful should always feign powerlessness and present themselves as victims. Women are masters at this. No matter how much dominance women obtain over men, they will always complain that they live in an oppressive patriarchal society.