To think we would alleviate a lot of misery and some poverty if we phased out marriage in favour of a straight financial contract without a monogamy requirement?

[thepeopleversuswork]

So my view is that its unrealistic to expect people to be monogamous for life.

There will be a small number of people who genuinely remain happily monogamous for decades, yes, but for the overwhelming majority of people a scenario where your financial security is explicitly tied to your ability to remain monogamous is outdated, unrealistic and punitive.

It pushes people to remain with someone long after the relationship has passed its sell-by date and often leaves them trapped with someone they no longer love or even like very much because they don't want to upset the children or disentangle finances.

Could we reimagine a kind of financial contract that essentially requires the financially stronger partner (usually, though not always, the man) to guarantee a certain level of financial support to the weaker partner for the duration of the time the children are at home or potentially later potentially renegotiable in the event that financial capacity changes -- but without the absurd requirement for monogamy?

Haven't thought this through in great detail so bear with me but to me the main reason why divorce is often so rancorous and damaging is because of the "cheating" and the recriminations as to how that should impact on the finances (ie you left me for your secretary, I'm going to take you to the cleaners).

If people were free to renegotiate their emotional commitment to one another without having to redraw the boundaries on the financial commitments linked to child-rearing, or vice versa, it would remove a lot of the most emotionally difficult elements of marriage breakdown, and the stigma.

Children would become more comfortable with the idea of their parents as a financial partnership who love and are committed to them but without the expectation that they have to remain together in perpetuity.

I have observed so many times that the thing that damages children in divorce is not so much the separation of their parents in itself, but the behaviour of their parents either in relation to new partners or in relation to money and the division of spoils.

If the financial element were clearer and not tied to sexual fidelity, and the stigma was removed around people dissolving relationships, would that not make it somewhat easier for children to accept this change in a non-damaging way?

Finally, getting rid of marriage would get rid of the loathsome cult of the wedding and all the toxic effect it has on generations of young women.

Anyone with me?

Prenups are of most use when a couple come to the marriage with existing and separate assets already. They have their place and can be really valuable and useful, but there are a lot of situations where they aren't going to do a lot. If you marry early in the relationship and build assets together later, they'd essentially need to predict the future. I'm a solicitor, so I suppose out of loyalty to the profession I should be talking up the idea that we all have them as standard, but there are a lot of situations where they're just not going to help achieve what you want them to achieve OP.

Additionally, in England and Wales, the welfare of children can basically override what the couple have agreed in a prenup. Correctly so, because the welfare of the children should be the most important priority if there are competing interests. But what this means is if you want prenups to be enforceable without regard for that, you then have to create a whole group of children whose interests are given less weight than others would be in the same scenario. This is really not desirable.