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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26209 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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OP claimed

only 10% of divorces actually result in any actual alimony paid.

Is this wrong?

I didn't read the study, but I can assume it's true, and it changes nothing. As pointed out in another comment:

When the Manosphere discussed the phenomenon of ‘divorce rape’, they didn’t just mean the issue of alimony payments, they also meant the ways child support payments are calculated, the way those are enforced, and the way child visitation rights are decided.

This is just the tip of the divorce-industrial complex iceberg.

  • The allocation of assets like houses, in which even if both parties contributed evenly to, is held hostage during divorce negotiations, or provided entirely to the female
  • The responsibility to maintain or pay taxes for those assets, which is assigned entirely to the male
  • The division of retirement accounts, including individually named ones when both parties are high-earning white collar professionals but one person didn't contribute
  • The delaying of remarriage (despite long-term cohabitation) to extend alimony payments when they're applied
  • The delaying of high school graduation to extend child support payments
  • The total disregard of value provided from one spouse to another prior to the divorce when determining alimony (my favorite anecdote - a friend paid for 4 years of his wife's post-grad degree as a full-time student to the tune of $150,000. She sucked her professor's dick at her graduation party, then ground out the extraction of his credit card points before the end of the divorce! Also received massive alimony payments since she delayed actually starting a job with her nice degree)

@Unsaying mentioned:

Then again, I'd expect high-earning men to also have good legal teams and/or hidden assets, so, who can say, really?

I can tell you firsthand that when shopping around for someone to help with a basic, equitable prenup: Family lawyers generally have some combination of either A: Genuine misandry or B: No desire to advocate for a client who's already predisposed to lose.

Sure you can bill the same amount as when you're representing women, but it's a near certainty you'll be left with an unhappy customer. Why bother?

my favorite anecdote - a friend paid for 4 years of his wife's post-grad degree as a full-time student to the tune of $150,000. She sucked her professor's dick at her graduation party, then ground out the extraction of his credit card points before the end of the divorce! Also received massive alimony payments since she delayed actually starting a job with her nice degree

I've worked enough in divorce law to say straightforwardly: this is retarded. The fact that your friend couldn't argue his way out of a wet paper bag is not an indictment of the adversarial legal system. Literally every aspect of that should have gone differently, and routinely does.

The majority of stories like this are the result of one party or another failing completely to argue their case, or walking into court totally unprepared to argue, or blowing off the court and being subject to a default judgment. These things just don't happen if you don't fuck up somewhere.

I've literally heard the same beer-rants of guys who claimed they'd been divorce raped in cases I knew intimately enough to know what he was leaving out.

For reference, here is a common trick where men who "got fucked in the divorce" fumbled the ball.

Wife's Attorney: You have three children, correct?

Husband: Yes.

WA: What are their names?

H: Kaylee, Kayleigh, and KaeLieh

WA: What are their ages?

H: Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I'm serious. This happens all the time.

I am sure there's more to the story and/or my buddy kept walking into proverbial rakes.

To circle back to my original point, he's now on a great upward trajectory 4 years later. Alimony timed out after something like 2 years?

The most baffling part of all of it is that they had no kids. I couldn't see the justification for any of it.

Another victim made the "mistake" of moving out after his wife cheated on him, so she got the house by default.

I'd still maintain that I don't understand how a court can arrive at these judgements, not matter how braindead a man's lawyer is.

Basically you're facing impenetrable just-worlding with a touch of refuge in audacity. There's no way it can be that bad therefore it must not be and the people who got screwed must have brought it on themselves.

Out of curiosity, what are other common tricks?

This is nightmare fuel for me.

I've heard you can get "bulletproof" prenups in the "his/hers/ours" vein. But then I hear horror stories about how because of one slip up in where a certain check went, all of a sudden all accounts have equal claim.

Question: Are there any states that don't have in effect common law marriage for long term cohabitation. If I had my druthers, I'd like to be long term monogamous but with ZERO POSSIBLE involvement from the state.

Alternatively, marry a good woman and don’t let your marriage go to crap.

I mean I know that’s easier said than done, but I would be very surprised if divorce for no apparent reason was common at all. Most of the time it’s either 1) you shouldn’t have married her, and it was obvious at the time 2) you shouldn’t have become an addict or 3) shouldn’t have let the marriage fall apart. The frequency of all three varies along the usual clines.

Seems like Common Law marriage is actually in a minority of states. Even so, someone cohabiting with you and splitting a mortgage will get them a lot of leeway in court to make things messy for you.

I don't think you can eliminate the risk. You need to do a ton of work upfront in picking a partner, then sign a great contract where both folks have legal representation, then still learn to live with a gun to your head.

No idea, but I bet it would be interesting to break that down by the net worth of the people involved. I suspect that maybe only about ten percent of men getting divorced are worth shearing, as it were. I do know that divorce is often initiated (by the woman) upon a man losing his job or suffering some other substantial curtailment in his earning potential.

Then again, I'd expect high-earning men to also have good legal teams and/or hidden assets, so, who can say, really? Maybe a wife who can afford her own good legal team and competently prosecute a divorce is also more interested in getting her slice of assets than hounding him for alimony, as she'll more often have her own solid income.

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