Ultimately whether or not a parent who has ended his career in order to look after a child has given up something probably depends entirely on the person. Parenting can often be a tiring, thankless job, and not all parents decide to bear the responsibility equally. Our society is still antiquated enough that more women will stay at home to look after their children than men, and there IS a reason why sole custody is usually granted to the mother when joint custody can't be agreed on. Maybe when society has evolved such that there are an equal number of women in high-powered, successful positions as there are men, alimony can be totally abandoned, but are you really considering that it can be extremely necessary as well?This is a typical strategy used to argume for alimony: Complaining about a bunch of stuff that she doesn’t like, without making any attempt to connect it to a point. I guess I shouldn’t have expected much grasp of logical concepts from someone who calls herself Niki.
But let’s take these “points” one at a time. First, that parenting is hard. So what? How does your choice to become a parent make someone else responsible for providing you a living stipend for the rest of your life? By the way, we have something called child support that attempts, poorly I might add, to share the burden of child rearing.
Second, Niki complains that more women stay at home. Again, that’s their choice. No one is forcing women -- or the few men who do it -- to give up their jobs to raise a child. If you don’t want to assume that risk, then go back to work after your maternity/paternity leave is up, and hire a nanny. Or did you not have a job to begin with? But again, this conversation is about alimony, not child support, so the point is irrelevant here.
Finally Niki suggests that women are discriminated against in the workplace and should be compensated for it. This claim is simply not supported by facts. But let’s assume it’s true. If workplace inequality is somehow unjust, and truly a societal problem, it should be dealt with by society as a whole, i.e. through government programs -- you know, like those designed to help the poor and other deadbeats who can’t earn a living -- not by forcing some transient romantic partner to support a woman for the rest of his miserable life.
But unfortunately, despite the utter ridiculousness of alimony, we’re stuck with it for now. So I’d recommend following this model, from an Anonymous response to It’s time to get rid of alimony:
This is why I had a prenuptial agreement in my first and ONLY marriage and pulled the ripcord after 4 years and dumped her. It saved my financial bacon. Marriage, monogamy and cohabitation are pointless and outdated. I prefer to move on to another woman after the bloom is off the rose with the current one. I have sole physical and legal custody of my 2 sones to due PAS and couldn't be happier. I have my money and my sons.Well done sir.
