Posted on 03/23/2018 6:36:41 AM PDT by C19fan
I agree. Just another reason why God hates divorce. Everyone loses, even the "winner", but especially the children.
I have no sympathy for one sex over the other, where children are involved. Divorce is an equal opportunity soul killer.
And you are incorrect about 100 years ago. At that time, women were still under legal “coverture”; that is, they were the legal chattel of their husbands. Women could not vote nor own property; hence, they were not considered the best option for sole custodian unless they were abandoned,or the husband granted it. Most judicial awards of custody, in the very rare instance where there was a custody suit then, were given to the father.
one young woman loves her job but is going to move to another state away from her family so her boyfriend can get his new job...
I meant on whom was filing for divorce (male vs female), not the total divorce rate.
Two hundred years ago, women were the legal property of their husbands. The person who broke the marriage was determined by the court to be "at fault" and punished accordingly. Adultery was illegal, and even the adulterer's sex partner could be sued or jailed. As it should be.
Today's family breakdown is largely attributable to so-called "no-fault" divorce, which has become a lucrative industry for lawyers, accountants, therapists, etc since the late 1960s. The longer they can keep the fighting going between the parties over the money and children, since no one can be declared "at fault" and have the whole thing over with, the more money they make.
That's why bad divorces happen to both men and women. The lawyers discuss the situation, determine how much money is in the pot, and keep it going wherever they find a weakness, in husband or in wife.
My friend, there is nothing wrong with social incentives to stay married, short of egregious abuse; they have always existed in some form or another. I hear you when you imply that incentives should fall in approximately equal measure on both sexes. But it can never be a perfect situation, or a perfect world.
People go into marriage today not expecting to be full economic and spiritual partners forever, for good or for bad, but rather to have their fantasy lives fulfilled, whether it is romance, money, dependency, dominance, a substance abuse partner or pron sex. Of course marriage cannot meet every need, taste or whim of either party. Happiness is very nearly accidental, and in a society, often random.
Joy, however, comes from a relationship with the Lord. We are each responsible for our own ultimate happiness or lack thereof. A couple is blessed who both believe in the same God in a similar fashion. Barna (Christian tracking) statistics have found, however, that even evangelicals divorce at the same rate as the general pop.
What is needed is to turn of the television and Hollywood romance concept and for churches and synagogues and even private enterprises associated with wedding venues to develop comprehensive, scientific as well as scriptural premarital diagnosis and teachings, and absolutely require months of instruction before they agree to marry a couple.
I would also like to see the return of illegitmacy. No child should ever be shamed as illegitimate, but there could be tax penalties for “illegitimate parents” that could only be lifted when they complete marriage instruction at the venue of their choosing and receive a certification of their instruction and marriage. The state needs to stop subsidizing out-of-wedlock breeders.
I don't know what state you live in, but there is highly unlikely a provision for lifetime alimony for a woman age 36. That just doesn't happen. Worst case would be "rehabilitative alimony" for a period of time in which she would be ordered by the court to obtain a marketable skill, going back to school if necessary.
Secondly, you cannot make an independent financial plan in a marriage. You have a goal to be retired at 45, but you changed your plan and increased your risk exposure when you a) married and b) agreed that she not work without a pre-nup or post-nup, since your highly aggressive retirement plan requires all hands on deck.
I might add, your highly aggressive retirement plan is not likely to take place without statistically unusual earnings and planning, so you need a qualified financial planner to work with you as a couple. You can't implement such as plan without the full cooperation of your default legal financial partner, so if you are keeping all the money issues to yourself, you're doing it wrong. This dream needs to be a shared dream, especially since there are no kids to look after you, or her when she does get too old to work.
Absolutely true. The socialist welfare state is destroying family rights and obligations, and has designs on the complete control of the "products of conception" from the moment of gestation onward.
I have rapidly bored of this conversation, but yes I would likely be on the hook for lifetime alimony in SC and I don’t have an independent financial plan in marriage. This retirement plan has been the goal for the last 6 years of our marriage (in which my income has gone from $40k/yr at marriage to > $300k in the last few years) but my could change her mind at any time and kill it from my side. And yes you are discussing all coulda-woulda - thats the point - the financial incentive favor women in divorce, period, end of story. There are exceptions, but those prove the rule. Enjoy running marriage into the ground further - because the current divorce rules are the largest part of it.
Casual dating - no sex involved - was fairly common when my 87 year old mother was young. Going “steady” was reserved for more serious relationships, and usually when you were of marriageable age.
I’m not an advocate of dating around until a proposal is made, but think that more casual dating would be a good thing.
Nowadays, though, it sounds as if young people don’t date at all— they just hook up.
A "stud" has no incentive to marry, if his current girlfriend can be easily replaced by a younger/hotter one at the point that she becomes too annoying about wanting commitment.
Meanwhile, the young woman has been rejecting the "nice" young men who WOULD have married her in her 20's until she's finally in her 30's and desperate. But by that time, the good men are already taken, and the ones available either have issues, or are bitter divorced men.
In the old "patriarchy" days, fathers would have made sure that studly cads with no intention of marriage never even got to talk to their daughters.
It's divorce and the divorce industry I have run into the ground, as my posts clearly state. Marriage as God designed it is incomparable here on earth. Too few even attempt it.
May you and your wife be blessed.
Both/either. Any woman asking for this kind of deal exhibits these characteristics, and any man who would put up with it can be described the same way or is really insecure.
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