Women aren’t the only ones affected financially by divorce.
Not all men have the scruples of a man I know who earns $170,000 and who’s second wife earns the same, allowing them a total take home pay of $20,000.00 each month, while he sends his two children just one tenth of his income in child support, even though Washington State allows up to 45% of the non-custodial parent’s income to be given as child support. He was happy to fully support his children if he was married to their mother, but not anymore. And, even though, on the child support worksheets there is a place to put the other adult in the household’s income (presumably if you have someone sharing household expenses, then you have more of your own income available to you to give to your children) it seems that this is taken into consideration in too few circumstances.
At the other end of the spectrum, I know a married couple where the wife works and the husband is a stay-at-home dad; attending scout meetings and coaching soccer. If they were to divorce, this man would be in the same position as many women who have been non- or low- wage earners during a marriage – akin to being fresh out of college. I’ve also heard of a friend-of-a-friend who lives back east’, whose ex-wife is a college professor, and both their children are grown and left home, yet he still has to pay her maintenance in perpetuity.
Somehow, there must be a better way to equal out the finances. It’s very difficult, especially in situations where there has been only one wage earner in the household during the marriage. Can that person now support two households? The ideals of having one parent stay home for the children don’t seem so easy any more. However, there is still the issue that the spouse who hasn’t worked for 5,10,15,20 years has no more earning capability than a 23 year old out of college.
In his book “The Complete Single Father”, author and single father, Michael Shimberg says “The first commandment for single dads is the mantra TOYK, or ‘think of your kids’. This is an important concept and puts perspective and priorities on all other decisions you make.”
This post is for the men out there who do support financial equality for their spouse who stayed home for their children all those years while he ‘climbed the corporate ladder’; for the men out there who do have their children’s best interests in mind (no matter what they think of, or feel about, their ex); for the men out there who want to work towards changing legislation and challenging lawmakers.
Your positive and proactive suggestions are welcome. Please share your experiences with situations that have worked, so that we can all benefit from your solutions.
2 comments:
Not all women lack the scruples of a women I know who earns next to nothing as a statement to the world that she should be deemed ‘handicapped’ by her choices in life. Ultimately, aren’t we all responsible for ourselves? Is happiness all about money? Understood that money matters but really, wouldn’t we all be better off in this world if we spent our energies trying to make our own lives work rather than finding others to blame for our misfortunes?
My ex was wrong for me in many ways – from the day-to-day to more emotional issues. We fought, we struggled to make it work and generally landed in frustration, we were angry with each other too much of the time and the ‘good’ in life together was missing in action. So what’s original about this story line?? Not so much. We all make wrong decisions that need correcting and although we’d like marriage to NOT be one of those ‘bad’ decisions, it is at times.
I sympathize with all that is relayed on this site as my own life is not much different in terms of learning and ‘education’. However, the real answer is in taking control of your own life rather than subscribing to a fantasy ‘power pill’ such as this site. The world is yours alone so make of it what you can and will. Don’t waste your time staying angry – done that and the world just stands still until you release the anger.
The bits of the story I tell is my own rather than someone else’s. I’ve learned through the years that holding on to anger, rejecting accountability or responsibility and not assuming a positive approach to my life overall is by far more damaging than divorce… and to be fair, may have been one of the causes of my divorce. Is this you? How do you plan to change your life? How do YOU plan to change to make your life what you want it to be in the future?
Thoughts?
My ex-wife is a complete disaster. I’ve been supporting her with alimony for years now and my obligation is about to run out. She’s angry and bitter, has refused to find a way to support herself (or has wasted time of futile forms of work attempts), has made REMARKABLY stupid decisions regarding her finances and is now blindly moving forward to foul her relationship with our kids by putting them in the middle of the anger she has never gotten tired of targeting towards me. They are beginning to see her actions more clearly and have begun to look for ways to avoid or side-step around her. The oldest one has expressed many concerns about his mothers behavior towards them and recently made the comment that ‘she lives vicariously through them rather than making a life for herself’. She also tells the kids lies, attempts to withhold their access to me and manipulates their worlds with the sole purpose of getting back at me. They’re beginning to understand this.
She must spend hours each day ONLY looking for ways to get back at me or contemplating some ridiculous move that she falsely believes will have some emotional impact on me. Frankly, the only impact that she has had on me is to leave me concerned that she may land herself living out of a cardboard box one day and what then will happen to our kids? They will always have a place to live with me as I have a stable life and income but it will be difficult for them to see their mother living on the street. It’s like watching a train wreck about to happen.
I’ve become convinced that there is something legitimately wrong with her head because she makes decision after decision that would make NO sense to any rational person. She obviously doesn’t see it in herself, but her logic is tragically wrong on so many occasions. What do you do with someone who is bent on destroying themselves and refuses to acknowledge it? Does this sound like a mentally ill person or simply someone that is SO angry that they’re willing to destroy everything that they should hold dear in order to hold on to the anger and relentlessly look for ways to target it ??
Our marriage was not a happy one. Can you imagine living with someone that forever needs an avenue to target hostility, holds themselves supreme over all else, believes they’re always right and refuses to see how her actions would completely destroy any emotionally healthy relationship? What amazes me is that she doesn’t understand why I stopped loving her! It was probably a mistake on my part to marry her to begin with. She was angry with her previous husband when I first met her and I mistakenly assumed that that would pass in time. In fact, it never passed and she has just found new things to be even angrier about. Her current rampage is money. She seems to think that I should bleed money in her direction for the remainder of my life where in fact what she should do is GET A JOB!!
Post a Comment