When I got married, our vows were based on sharing love. My vows were not based on money. After I got married, I did not get much love. The only spousal support I wanted was love but I never got spousal support in marriage. However, now in divorce, I have to pay spousal support to a spouse who did not support me.
It is pretty sad when everybody thinks spousal support in terms of money. It is quite pathetic actually.
Anyway, there are some economic flaws in the opening post.
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Originally Posted by Divorcemanagement
Reason prevailed and an agreement was reached. Dad was resentful of having to pay but realized that he had to pay lest he go to court and be forced to pay.
Moral of the story - stay-at-home parents are undervalued in our society.
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I object. By your calculations, stay-at-home parents are overvalued by virtue of the fact that they are expected to be compensated equally to other jobs in the labor force.
Reason does not seem to be prevailing. Nannies can get fired if they do a poor job or if they do not cooperate with their employers. That is not the case with a stay-at-home parent. It is exactly the opposite.
Making an equivalency between a stay-at-home parent and the job of a nanny is not reasonable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Divorcemanagement
that they stayed home implies that it was consentual and as such, spousal support should be paid.
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It makes no sense to conclude that it was consensual by the very fact that you have to threaten a spouse in a court of law to accept it.
If it was consensual, that means the father could have left the family high and dry long ago if he objected to the performance of the stay-at-home parent. However, that is not the case. If he left, the strong arm of the law is always threatening him to pay the wife according to some arbitrary calculations.
To put it a different way, the decision of the working parent to accept the status quo for 5, 10, 15, 20, whatever years is made under duress because the wife can always threaten to extract alimony.