[quote=FlyerInHi]More total income per household is better than less. There’s a correlation, but marriage in of itself doesn’t guarantee that. Marriage is just social engineering for pooling of resources.[/quote]
Wow, I find myself actually agreeing with brian, here! I DO believe in marriage but I see so many people (especially parents of minor child(ren)) who feel they are “trapped” in their marriages, precisely due to divorce laws, which are patently unfair to the higher-earner spouse and too lax with the lower/non-earner spouse.
I think a lot of people enter marriages (esp 1st marriages) thinking that their new working spouse who is currently taking care of themselves will always be that way. As the years go by, one (or both) of the spouses changes in a manner which wasn’t what the other party signed up for (absent long-term illness). Nothing in this regard was ever discussed between them while one party quietly and unilaterally decided to quit their jobs and/or one (or both) parties (consciously or unconsciously) stopped taking care of themselves.
Life can be short … wa-a-a-y too short to spend the bulk of it with a “roommate” who is only still with you because they (as an able-bodied adult), choose not to bring in their fair share of support and thus are too insecure to leave. The complaining higher earner who allows this behavior in their spouse is also to blame for the mess they are in.
I find it sad that many, many people staying in marriages for the long haul are only doing so for financial reasons. Long-dissatisfied dads are also staying in their marriages in droves because they have (erroneously, in CA) been told that they will only see their kids a few days per month if they divorce. Many of them believe this bunk but nothing could be further from the truth. In CA, absent a few very specific reasons having to do with incarceration and hospitalization of a parent, BOTH parents are each entitled to a 50% timeshare of the children in the event of a divorce (or in the case of never-married parents).
In short, if the CA legislature repealed and reformed the legislation on child support being based upon the timeshare percentage(s) with the child(ren), it would completely eliminate time-consuming and costly custody battles. Also, legislation needs to be reformed on basing the amount of CS (and SS, if applicable) on current income of each party and instead base it on imputed income to a party who is deliberately underemployed or unemployed solely for the purpose of qualifying for more support from (or paying less support) to the other party. Some judges already do this but there is no practical enforcement mechanism in place in the law.
If these two areas of CA law were reformed, it would eliminate much of the tremendous amount of fear (mostly unfounded, IMO) over getting a divorce. In other words, I feel being a single person (with no mindfvckery and drama in their lives) is far preferable to being married, whether a parent of minors … or not.
I think kids do fine when their parents divorce as long as they can continue to stay with each parent regularly, especially if it is palpable to them that their parents don’t even like each other. This doesn’t work as well if the parents live more than 10 miles apart and a 50/50 timeshare situation doesn’t really work if one parent relocates too far from their kid(s) school(s).
I don’t have any issues with the CA property division laws in the event of divorce.
