Posted on 12/19/2007 9:56:44 AM PST by PurpleMan
"...in today’s world, in which women have fought for the right to equality, alimony seems more like a kid getting an allowance from daddy and I believe it should be abolished altogether except for extremely dire circumstances where a spouse is older, cannot work at all, and for only a short term period. No man or woman should be held to being a slave to an ex-spouse after a marriage ends. That said, if we are going to have alimony laws, I believe that men and women should be held to an equal standard under the law."
(Excerpt) Read more at pajamasmedia.com ...
Well put.
That’s why marriage came to be - it IS a contract.
Congratulations. It can be done, and it is done, often.
I think we all agree Mom/Dad is better, but if there’s only Mom or Dad, it can work and the kids will turn out OK.
The key is discipline and love.
I raised mine to be a productive conservative without a Dad, and my cousin’s wife raised three boys to be the same(my cousin died of alcoholism-poisoning).
LOL - great post
Thank you!!
and it’s all true.
(scary, ain’t it)
...um to the casual reader, that sure sounds like lots of complaining.
...just saying
I’m going to defend her and say, here....
she’s telling her story.... which means what she may not have voiced in public she’s voicing here.
In front of the child and in front of her ex may be a totally different story.
just sayin ... seems like pointing out facts is complaining.
must be a gender thing ... :)
I held in what was happening in our home for years. Now I don’t so much, and I’m not going to aplogize for it.
Got about as much chance of this happening as a republican winning the white house in ‘08.
I was at work and near me were a group of three female coworkers. They were all a bit over middle age and from their comments, it was easy to deduce that they were divorced, living alone, not dating, (medically speaking here...) categorized as morbidly obese, borderline dyke in appearance (though they claimed hetero status) and extremely bitter toward all men. I say this because that was the topic of their conversation, if you’d like to call it that. I suppose it was more of a case of who can tell the best man bashing story contest.
I sat and quietly listened and chuckled to their stories. The bitterness and vitriol was absolutely amazing.
The last story told was by the most angry of them all. She relayed how all men are such pigs. “They can’t even leave the toilet seat down after using the bathroom!”; she snorted. Oh that was a good one and everyone had their turn at men-the-the-bathroom stories. The best were the why can’t men lift the seat before peeing...they get pee on the seat and never wipe it down!!!”
~collective GAAASSSSPPPP~
Not being one to easily keep my mouth closed when hearing such silliness and at the very least to defend my brothers, finally, I just had to chirp into the conversation.
In an attempt to add a bit of levity to the gender murder scene, I very sarcastically asked the leader of the pose; “So, exactly where is it written that it is for the man to maintain he position of the toilet seat? I mean we men feel it is a woman’s DUTY to leave the seat up for us as a sheer matter of courtesy. Do you know how many toilet seat droplets would never soil that throne if women simple left the seat up when they were finished!?!”
Needless to say, the sarcasm hit the target perfectly and each woman’s head exploded in a boiling rage. And to be honest I squirmed with delight, for now they knew how any man felt who had to listen to their man-hater garbage.
The “dialog moved along until the leader of the posse told this horrific story of how she hated her brother. Apparently, she had to share a bathroom with him throughout her childhood and she had been left indelibly scarred from the trauma. As she told it, he would NEVER put the seat back down after peeing.
At which I quickly snarked; “were you courteous enough to leave it up for him?” The veins on her forehead were near ready to burst.
She continued; "And it never failed...I’d get up to use th bathroom in the middle of the night and sit down, only to fall into the toilet because he was such a PIG!”
~collective gasp~...again from the hens
At which I simply had to ask...
“So...for eighteen years, you put up with that?”
“I had to”; she wryly snorted
“I can’t believe that you are willing to publicly admit that in eighteen years you didn’t learn to look to see if the seat was down before sitting on the toilet and are here actually blaming your brother the stupid one for your splashdowns! Your brother WASN'T the stupid one!”
~red-faced silence~...while I LMAO!
The hens didn’t talk to me after that, but they did maintain their bitter hen-coffee-clutch meetings in corners of the building. When I left there, each of them were still single and still just as bitter as the day I first overheard their collective carping..
Face it ladies...more often than not, it is the guy who gets the short end of the deal in divorce and custody courts...almost all the time! Carp about it all you want. Bring all of the "oh I once knew a gal" and "let me tell you my story" examples you like, but the fact remains the same. Guys get screwed more times than not.
With all of that said, i wish NOBODY got screwed...especially the kids.
Somebody much wiser than all once said; "It was not that way from the beginning".
...it’s quite simple really...
You said you never complained...but in fact, that is what you were doing.
It wasn’t a mere relating fo facts, it was a comparison of what you percievd was an injustice.
The courts are available for you to receive fair support. But as it is posted, it sounds as though that eith has not been pursued, or has been pursued but the courts found that you were receiving just compensation, or there is more to the story than what you are telling. Seems rather odd that the courts have decided that $100 is suitable child support for you.
I only ever said what I thought could be verified as factual or commonsense - the rest I’ve just kept to myself.
Actually that’s not true - my dogs, horses and birds have heard the whole story in bits and pieces over the years, as I’ve needed to vent :)
Ok, now you've let your hand show. Your mind is made up and you have a myopic view of women. Look, I honestly know as many woman who've been screwed over in divorce and custody situations. I've heard horror stories on both sides, and I also have seen the hows and whys of the situations.
Like you, I base it totally on anecdotal evidence. And do you realize, that there are a lot, I mean a LOT, I mean a lot of Freeper females here who either haven't got a penny, or who can count their total child support for over 10 in triple digits?
Yet you act like they deserve the crap they've gotten....or its OK, or whatever.
Amy I saying guys haven't or don't get screwed? No. But the picture you guys keep painting HERE is like you're these innocent victims, and any woman HERE who posts the opposite of your beliefs must bet some evil witch, a crazy vampire or a 690 pound bull dyke.
Thanks, and were supposed to treat you with respect and courtesy? Why?
There are two sides to these stories. And a lot of good, kind, decent and NORMAL looking humans on both sides of the equation.
PS, there are a bunch of guys who posted some pretty bloody slash and burn posts that spiked the meter on psychotic bitter complaining. I mean, NOTHING compared to what I've seen women post here.... Yet its funny to see all the "there there, we guys are here for ya...." sympathy the wack jobs get....Holy crap. I've seen chickens treed by dogs who were more in controll.
But oh, I forget, we women (here) are evil beyond hope and redemption so anything you guys say and do to us (here) is OK. Out of fairness, why haven't you given them (ya know, the male, out of control, psycho, meter spiking bitter wack jobs) the equal "Bitter Boy Under the Microscope" scrutiny and asked them the same questions?
Rhetorical question because I know the answer.....and you men call US cliquish. hrmpt. Lockerooms don't die after high school.
Thank you for speaking up (writing)
There’s enough pain to go around, isn’t there.
Having grown a family with mostly daughters I always considered the toilet seat issue gentlemanly, but moreso a clear safety issue. Think about it in the dark.
Doesn’t it always depend on the individual circumstances of a specific situation taken one by one?
Excellent example of individual circumstances, no? Intelligent reasoning me thinks.
No reason. What's reason got to do with it? No, seriously, in your scenario, at the time of the change of custody, the father can and should insist that they enter a formal consent order in court that changes custody and either terminates, or reverses the direction of, child support. If anything, you could envision a weird situation where the bargain includes a few shekels going to the wife where she is totally indigent and can't even afford visitation expenses.
I never took it back to court after the first $28,000 dollars of legal fees.
I was learnt my lessons well.
I didn’t need the total BS and harassment I got from him and his wife and their lawyers(she worked at a legal firm and got her lawyers for free, so it was costing them nothing to create havoc), and it was causing real school and personal problems with the kid.
They’d take her for their night, and verbally abuse her AND me - this to a 9-10 year old. Not to mention denying her food to the point I’d pack her some food so she’d have something to eat beyond the small bowl of spaghetti they would give her.
The real joy was getting the midnight phone calls when she, at age 9-10, was hiding under a bed, crying and begging me to come get her, and dear old Dad could be heard screaming in the background that she was a bitch, he hated her, she was just like her no-good POS mother, and she was just a piece of trash that no one would ever love. Nice, huh ?
I got one of those calls on tape, took it to the judge, and got an agreement that if the kid wanted to come home on any of those nights or not go ever again, it was up to her.
I learned that if I just shut up and flew under their radar, they’d stop the harassment and life would be good again. And, since I was making considerably more money than he, I was only eligible for $400 a month anyhow, certainly not enough to justify the $$$ I’d spend collecting and defending it, while they took my life apart and made hers as miserable as they could. I could certainly afford to pay for her costs and extras, and no $$$ would ever serve to compensate me for court time or his vitriol. He was the vindictive, petty, mean and jealous fool - and remains so today.
To this day - they live 20 minutes away, and they still don’t want anything to do with her, even tho at this point she’s an adult, she’s a lovely child who gets straight As in college, is successful at everything she does, and I wouldn’t need to ever get involved.
You know what - you should just understand that regardless of gender, there are a lot of people out there who use their children to get back at their x-spouse, and they ain’t confined to the female gender.
And please - just because you don’t know “the whole story” doesn’t mean there isn’t one.
I could unload a lot of other “wonderful” things this man did and said to a young child that any sensible person would shudder at. But you and others like you would call it complaining, not statements of factual events.
In your book, being of the female gender convicts me of being a bitter, man hating harridan instead of a rational stater of facts. I lived this nightmare for many years, and it’s a testimony to my common sense that I don’t hate men - unlike your type, who call all women complainers.
And your comment about “the courts are there for you to receive fair justice” - was that meant to be a joke ? This whole thread is about how the courts are UNFAIR and capricious. Did you miss that point ?
As for $100 being adequate - do you think so ? What do you think is adequate for any parent ? Do you think you can raise a kid on $200 a month, assuming equality between parents ?
He’s not going to get Will a Christmas present. Maybe not Jared either
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