> Sex, love and childbearing have become a la carte choices rather than a package deal that comes with marriage.
The American legal system right now is absolutely draconian and broken to men. A man can try to be a good father and husband, do nothing wrong except be a bit of a putz, then his wife divorces him, gets full custody of the kids, and 30-50% of his after-tax income. She receives more money if he doesn't get custody of the kids, so women who don't like a man often fight for that.
So people mention prenups as a way to make sure these things are understood. Unfortunately, prenuptial agreements "that weren't fair enough" routinely get thrown out of court. If the prenup was "under duress", it gets thrown out. That includes the man saying he won't get married without the prenup - that means it was under duress and coerced, toss that sucker, split everything up.
Now most guys give it a try anyway, and say, "Well, I'm different, I'm going to have a stronger relationship and do xyz and zyx and...." - and that's admirable. But a lot of people look at the courts and want nothing to do with it. Anyone who is familiar with how otherwise good and nice people act when they're given ridiculous leverage and power gets a little scared at the court system.
There's other factors. But black people know this. I had the radio on yesterday, and "celebrity news" came on. A rapper named Nas - black man who was married to a black woman - is now getting divorced. One child. He's got to pay $150,000 per month in alimony and child support.
Some teenager hears that on the radio, thinks it's crazy, and decides he's rather uninterested in marriage. If the laws were made less brutal, I think you'd see more people marrying, marrying at an earlier age, having more children, and paradoxically - I think the divorce rate would go down. Certainly, it'd be hard to make something worse than the current state of affairs.
The American legal system has lots of things that are very hard to explain to foreigners. The sheer amount of case law and the jury system make for lots of income for lawyers and very little justice.
Child support should be limited to what it actually costs to rear a child, not some arbitrary multiple of that.
It varies from child to child. If someone's child is in some rich boarding school, I personally think they should be allowed to continue on at that school unless it is financially infeasible for both parents to live apart and still afford it.
If the 'bare minimum' of raising a child is $300/month, then I don't think they the child should necessarily be forced out of their school and into the public school system or something just _because_ that's the bare minimum. I think that these factor should be taken into account.
disclaimer: I am _not_ a rich person, nor do I have any children.
{edit} That said, if the monthly child-support is determined to be really high based on the child going to an expensive school, the child-support payment should be reduced if the custodial parent decides to pull the child out of that school for a cheaper one {/edit}
Case Law is in-transparent and tough to navigate through vs. Civil Law Code (Roman Law) from Continental Europe, where law has to be derived from higher written-down principles. It's mostly the Anglo-Saxon societies that have Case Law.
My intuition is that legal costs are higher in Anglo-Saxon countries, which is the direct result of the Case Law system.
China and Japan adapted Civil Law (Roman Law) as their system, which they then customized internally. They compared different legal systems and concluded Civil Law to be efficient.
There are so many inaccuracies in that comment I don't know where to begin.
1) Contrary to popular belief, most prenups are not thrown out -- the only requirements for a valid prenup to survive legal challenge is that both the (future) husband and wife were separately represented by counsel, AND that both spouses disclosed ALL properties (real and personal) they possessed. The validity of a prenuptial agreement is measured at the time it was signed, unless extraordinary circumstances justify re-evaluating it at the time of divorce -- and in such cases, the re-evaluation takes into account the relative importance of holdings. For example -- a normal person selling a startup for millions is an extraordinary event. Warren Buffet selling a company for millions is not.
EDIT: Note that I am simplifying the requirements; the others involve a lawyer, so the lawyer will let you know what they are if you ever do a prenup.
2) Spousal support -- does not include money for the children. It is solely to "equalize" income between the former spouses, and can be readjusted on petition at any time by either spouse.
3) Child support -- the custodial parent may not use child support for their own benefit (unless that benefit is incidental to the benefit to the child). If the custodial parent does use child support for their own benefit, the non-custodial parent is entitled to reimbursement for that amount, and possibly a reduction in child support.
Interlude: Nas. Nas is a millionaire. He had a kid, with a woman, and lived a lavish lifestyle. B/c of that, on divorce, his wife and kid get to continue living a lavish lifestyle via alimony (wife's standard of living during marriage) and child support (child's standard of living during marriage). Lesson to learn: If you're rich, live a normal lifestyle and you won't pay (relatively) much in support.
4) Poor people -- whether black or white -- do not trust the legal system. The reasons are mostly obvious. However, a good portion of it is that poor people base their understanding of the law on shows like Judge Judy and Jerry Springer, not realizing that these shows are staged and/or not real courts.
5) The divorce rate for first-time marriages is less than 30%. (20% is the figure I hear most often). The divorce rate for people who have been married before increases by about 10-20% for each subsequent marriage. If you take out the multiples, divorce is actually fairly uncommon.
Note too, that the divorce rate amongst college-educated couples (both spouses) is less than half of the divorce rate amongst couples where neither spouse went to college (stats for first-time marriages).
5) Harsh divorce laws discourage divorce. Think about it -- the easier and less painful it is too divorce, the more likely people are to go through with it. Divorce rates jumped when no-fault divorce laws were passed.
You totally miss the biggest problem lionhearted pointed out: through no fault of the father, if the mother decides she wants a divorce the legal system will pretty much by default strip the father of his children and hand them over to the mother. Regardless of any other circumstances.
That's the main reason why men should not get married and have kids in the USA.
Except that the default presumption is, by law in every state, joint custody, and every state has court rulings to back that up.
The proponent of exclusive custodial control must prove the other parent's unfitness for custody. This is easy, if say, the other parent is a convict or a drug dealer. It's not so easy for suburbanites or rich folk. While the bar is lower than criminal guilt, it's not much lower -- proof must be by "clear and convincing evidence", which is significantly higher than the usual civil burden of "more likely than not".
Indeed, in over 90% of the cases I worked on, the exclusive custody proponent lost. The myth about mothers always getting the children isn't just a myth, it's blatantly untrue. Where exclusive custody is awarded, the father is just as likely to get custody of the children (usually b/c the mother does not have a job and is unable or unwilling to find one).
Kid, I worked in Cleveland. If there's any city where mothers should be "stealing" the kids from their fathers, its going to be a city where more than a 1/3rd of the male population doesn't have a job.
A quick googling shows a large number of websites devoted to dad's rights, helping fathers get joint custody and/or visitation, defense against false accusations of abuse by vindictive exes, "throwaway dads", etc.
There are no such sites for women. That should tell you something.
"Results 1 - 10 of about 22,000,000 for mother's rights. (0.23 seconds)."
Hmm... it seems that you're wrong about that. And the number of websites listed in Google is a poor measure of something's worth. After all, there are 2,810,000 results for "obama citizenship" even though that issue has already been settled.
Also look up alien abduction, underpants gnomes, and other urban legends.
I don't claim that courts in the past favored mothers, but in the present, there is no gender bias under the law.
When searching around, the sites you find that exist for helping out dads are substantial. Real hardship, current stories, and dealing with the grief of having your kids taken away by a woman who has gotten tired of being married.
When divorce happens, that's when you see what people are really made of. Some women will take custody just to hurt dad.
Anyway, I hope you're right about the lessening of gender bias. I'd love to see data. No idea where I'd find such data though.
> There are so many inaccuracies in that comment I don't know where to begin.
You could begin by sourcing your claims :) I wrote my reply casually, based on my knowledge of the law, statistics, studies, and a number of personal anecdotes. This time, I'll source myself and provide links to official statistics and the actual law this time, as you're mistaken on a few counts.
> 1) ...The validity of a prenuptial agreement is measured at the time it was signed, unless extraordinary circumstances justify re-evaluating it at the time of divorce...
This is simply not true. For instance, here's the California legal code:
"Any provision in a premarital agreement regarding spousal support, including, but not limited to, a waiver of it, is not enforceable... if the provision regarding spousal support is unconscionable at the time of enforcement."
California Family Code, Section 1612.7, part c. Convenient link here:
That hinges on the word "unconscionable"? In the real, practical world, that means that SUBJECTIVELY THE JUDGE DOESN'T THINK IT'S RIGHT BASED ON AMERICAN VALUES. Yes, that's actually how it goes.
Edit: Here's the legal definition and some discussion of unconscionable for curious people. Practically, it leaves it up the judge's... conscience. Subjective.
> 2) Spousal support -- does not include money for the children.
Correct. If the woman sues for full custody, and gets it, she gets more than equalization of income. Therefore, pressing for full custody and no father's custody rights = more money. Big problem.
> Interlude: Nas. Nas is a millionaire. He had a kid, with a woman, and lived a lavish lifestyle. B/c of that, on divorce, his wife and kid get to continue living a lavish lifestyle via alimony (wife's standard of living during marriage) and child support (child's standard of living during marriage).
Right, I think that's crazy. He had her to host parties for him, cook for him, keep the home, help him keep his finances. All of that is gone. His quality of living will go down, it is shot, he no longer receives enjoyment of having his child around to play with when he comes home from a hard day. She's used to living a $150,000 per month lifestyle and thus deserves to keep it? He's used to having a supportive wife behind him, that keeps the home, that helps, that he can bounce ideas off of. That's gone. He should pay her close to $2 million a year because it'd be a shame for her quality of life to go down while his is getting shot up? The system is crazy.
> Lesson to learn: If you're rich, live a normal lifestyle and you won't pay (relatively) much in support.
So then you live modesty, and save, and invest, and the assets are split 50/50 if you divorce instead. Not much better.
> 5) The divorce rate for...
A lot of the statistics overlap and there's a lot of noise there, but divorce rates are high here. For instance, "The National Center for Health Statistics recently released a report which found that 43 percent of first marriages end in separation or divorce within 15 years. The study is based on
the National Survey of Family Growth, a nationally representative sample of women age 15 to 44 in 1995. Bramlett, Matthew and William Mosher. "First marriage dissolution, divorce, and remariage: United States," Advance Data From Vital and Health Statistics; No.323. Hyattsville
MD: National Center for Health Statistics: 2 1.
The divorce rates are high in the States. Subjectively, I think it'd be a good thing if they were lower and would lead to more individual happiness and a stronger society on the whole. You can debate how high the rates are when controlling for certain statistics, but they're clearly really way too damn high (again, in my subjective judgment).
> 5) Harsh divorce laws discourage divorce.
Yes and no. Harsh divorce laws against both partners discourage divorce. Harsh divorce laws against one gender increase divorce. One quick and dirty way to figure out which side a country's divorce laws are slanted is to look at who initiates divorce proceedings by gender.
United States? Over 2/3rds initiated by women. It's close to 70%.
I tried searching divorce rates by country to find the statistics for you, but I couldn't find a link - so this is going off personal recall, but I remember seeing some crystal clear statistics. Divorce rates close to 50/50 in much of Continentinal Europe, slanted 70/30 men in many Islamic countries, and 70/30 women in the USA and UK. Those are just numbers - but my subjective judgment call? Things are messed up here. I ended my original comment with a statement that wasn't quite right. I'll amend it:
If the laws were made less brutal to men, I think you'd see more people marrying, marrying at an earlier age, having more children, and paradoxically - I think the divorce rate would go down.
He had her to host parties for him, cook for him, keep the home, help him keep his finances. All of that is gone. ... He's used to having a supportive wife behind him, that keeps the home, that helps, that he can bounce ideas off of. That's gone.
LOL. Uhh... Nas wasn't married to June Cleaver, he was married to Kelis. Her "milkshake brings all the boys to the yard" Kelis. I'm guessing she wasn't cooking and cleaning for him. Whatever the general status of men and divorce, he's a chump for not having her sign the most egregious pre-nup ever penned.
1) Unconscionable -- IS NOT SUBJECTIVELY DEFINED. At law, it must be objectively apparent that the prenup is "substantially unfair". It's not simply a matter of the judge's conscience -- b/c the determination is a legal one (not a factual one), it must be apparent to the appeals court. BTW, only first-year law students use legal dictionaries, which do not have the force of law in any state, and at best, offer only the shared elements of the meaning of a term as it is individually used in all 50 states.
1b) You see that part where it says "spousal support"? That's crucial -- b/c the REST of the prenup is evaluated at the time of execution, not the time of divorce.
2) Both spouses' quality of living is considered -- the post-divorce quality of living must be equalized -- his may go down, but then so does hers. Usually, even with spousal support, the woman is at a disadvantage. BTW, if you think partying every night is a lowered standard of living for Nas, you don't understand who he is or what he does for a living.
From the source YOU cited:
"Divorce Myth 5: Following divorce, the woman's standard of living plummets by 73 percent while that of the man's improves by 42 percent.
Fact: This dramatic inequity, one of the most widely publicized statistics from the social sciences, was later found to be based on a faulty calculation. A reanalysis of the data determined that the woman's loss was 27 percent while the man's gain was 10 percent. Irrespective of the magnitude of the differences, the gender gap is real and seems not to have narrowed much in recent decades."http://health.discovery.com/centers/loverelationships/articl...
5) My source was Newseek, based on the latest US Census and the latest edition of the study you cited. If you want to wade through the census data, feel free to do so.
"In 2005, the marriage rate was 7.5 per 1,000 people, while the divorce rate was 3.6 per 1,000, according to the National Center for Health Statistics. But since the people who get married in any given year usually are not the same people who get divorced (OK, maybe a few), the statistic isn't very meaningful. Even if you look at divorces among married couples, the rate has declined from a peak of 22.8 divorces per 1,000 in 1979 to 16.7 divorces in 2005."http://www.newsweek.com/id/161233.
5b) And I reiterate, that harsh divorce laws discourage divorce for both genders. The gender imbalance is not inherent in the laws, it is an outgrowth of the fact that women have babies and usually stay home to take care of them, meaning that they lose/leave their jobs and thus earn lower pay for their relative age/experience.
BTW, have you ever looked at European family law? Divorce is even easier than getting married, and it shows -- European divorce rates trump the US.
I worked in the Family Court for a year. I can say from experience (a) people do not think about divorce when they think about getting married, unless they are wealthy and/or educated (b) young people do not generally put much thought, if any, to marriage beyond what their hormones are telling them, (c) people have plenty of kids before/outside of marriage just fine as it is, and finally (d) stress from child-rearing is a significant factor in most divorces -- couples with more children are more likely to get divorced. Don't believe me? Have you ever heard of "Jon and Kate + 8"? For a few weeks, you couldn't read a newspaper without seeing talking heads talk about the divorce rate among parents of large broods (4+ children).
I've quite enjoyed the discussion and learned some things here. You pointed out some points and minor disagreements and errors in the last couple comments - like that,
> BTW, only first-year law students use legal dictionaries, which do not have the force of law in any state, and at best, offer only the shared elements of the meaning of a term as it is individually used in all 50 states.
And y'know, I linked to one because it had cross-links and some backgrounds and an opinion of a U.S. Supreme Court Judgment, which I thought made it of some value.
A detail, like whether unconscionability is subjectively determined at time of divorce would be an interesting debate. You could say it's not subjectively determined under the law, that each state has reasonably clear law on that score. Or you could note that is as an ambiguous word in the CA code that calls for a judgment call that's not particularly objective, and will be made differently by different justices with different values about what's fair or not.
But in the end, it doesn't matter much. I reckon most people got a thorough going-over of it and are more educated now.
For the hell of it, because I'm curious - I had two central thesis-type statements and I'm not sure you agree or disagree.
1. The American [family court] legal system right now is absolutely draconian and broken to men.
2. If the laws were made less brutal to men, I think you'd see more people marrying, marrying at an earlier age, having more children, and paradoxically - I think the divorce rate would go down.
Yes? No? Lots of interesting details, points of debate, ways of interpreting law and statistics - but I'm a bit curious if you're basically a Yay or Nay on those thoughts if you happen to still be reading.
1) I worked in the Family Court for a year -- it's definitely not draconian and broken to men. As I said in another post -- it is only in rare occasions, like habitual drug use (not just alcoholism) that either parent loses custody on divorce, and in such cases, the woman was just as likely to lose custody to the father.
2) The divorce rate has been going down steadily, despite the lack of change in divorce laws -- the rise in divorce was a social phenomenon, not a legal effect. Less harsh laws might have some effect, but not the level of impact you're thinking.
So that would be a categorical no to the first, and a qualified yes to the second.
The American legal system right now is absolutely draconian and broken to men. A man can try to be a good father and husband, do nothing wrong except be a bit of a putz, then his wife divorces him, gets full custody of the kids, and 30-50% of his after-tax income. She receives more money if he doesn't get custody of the kids, so women who don't like a man often fight for that.
So people mention prenups as a way to make sure these things are understood. Unfortunately, prenuptial agreements "that weren't fair enough" routinely get thrown out of court. If the prenup was "under duress", it gets thrown out. That includes the man saying he won't get married without the prenup - that means it was under duress and coerced, toss that sucker, split everything up.
Now most guys give it a try anyway, and say, "Well, I'm different, I'm going to have a stronger relationship and do xyz and zyx and...." - and that's admirable. But a lot of people look at the courts and want nothing to do with it. Anyone who is familiar with how otherwise good and nice people act when they're given ridiculous leverage and power gets a little scared at the court system.
There's other factors. But black people know this. I had the radio on yesterday, and "celebrity news" came on. A rapper named Nas - black man who was married to a black woman - is now getting divorced. One child. He's got to pay $150,000 per month in alimony and child support.
Some teenager hears that on the radio, thinks it's crazy, and decides he's rather uninterested in marriage. If the laws were made less brutal, I think you'd see more people marrying, marrying at an earlier age, having more children, and paradoxically - I think the divorce rate would go down. Certainly, it'd be hard to make something worse than the current state of affairs.