Disparity & Spousal maintenance.

[Buuddyy]

AIBU to think asking for spousal maintenance in a 50/50 custody arrangement with no maintenance due from either party is just plain entitlement?

That would work as long as the "poorer" party was given a greater share when dividing assets. This is what often happens to avoid the need for spousal maintenance in England and Wales with the poorer party retaining 60-70% of assets to enable them to house themselves and their (joint) children.

Oh I forget to add - he threatened to take me to court for spousal maintenance as he’s only earning £25,000 / year. Except I’m earning about £27,00 a year and I’m housing/ feeding / clothing our kids for 364 days a year.

He insists on having them for part of Christmas Day and part of Fathers day. I have to take them and pick them up of course. But not overnight as that’s too much work and he’s doesn’t have room for them to stay over in his 4 bed house.

Exactly this!

I don’t get why it’s somehow better for the taxpayer to step in instead of the person who benefitted from the unpaid labour of the spouse seeking support.

Sorry but this isn’t true. My best friend worked really hard. Often two jobs. His husband did his hobby for “his job”. It paid less than minimum wage. They never had children. My BF paid the mortgages (two properties) and all bills. He paid for the vet bills. Holidays. The car. Renovations to one of the properties. And often gave his DH a top up to his wages which he spent on nice things for himself. My BF would often complain money was getting tight. Mortgage had gone up, renovations cost a lot more than planned. One pet got sick and the bills were very high. He asked his DH to get better paid work. DH always found a reason not to. And then decided to retrain as something else (which would take him several years and with no guaranteed income at the end!!). After much counselling and trying to make it work, BF said he wanted to end the marriage. And although the DH moved into the much nicer of the two properties, BF had to keep on paying the bills and mortgages on both! Again he would ask for him to please contribute something, but the DH said he was brokenhearted and couldn’t work. This has now been the case for two years. BF is utterly skint. Working two jobs while ex DH carries on living in the beautiful home doing his hobby job and training. Oh and he’s kept the car. BF has just been to mediation and they’ve said he needs to continue paying spousal maintenance for 2 more years! Until the training is finished basically, although the amount has dropped considerably. ExDH is now complaining how hard done by he is (he demanded a lot more and has been wringing my BF dry for 2 years refusing to get a proper job) and using SM to say how the divorce has been so hard on him alongside nice photos of all his lovely weekends away with friends! He also gets to keep the nice house.

And there were no children involved. It disgusts me how someone can expect to coast along living the dream and genuinely expect this ought to be paid for by someone else. If they’d had children I would understand it. If exDH had given up a career to be a stay at home Husband perhaps. But no, he’s never had a proper job and doesn’t see why he should have to get one or why his lifestyle should take a hit.

So spousal maintenance is definitely a thing! Even without kids involved.

How much of the unpaid labour did your relative perform during the marriage?

Did they reduce hours to assist with childcare? Do half the domestic labour, emotional labour? Or leave it all to their spouse while they benefitted from being able to focus on paid work with no distractions?

It's pretty obvious that spousal maintenance is seldom paid these days except in extreme cases though. I'd be interested in what the situation is with your relative (I assuem it's a man?).

I used to work in banking. And quite frankly, every single time one of those fuckers got divorced, I hoped his wife was taking him to the cleaners for spousal support and/or share of the assets. SOOOOOO many of them were earning mega bucks and had clearly been treating their wives with contempt for years.

I have a friend whose banker husband recently announed he wanted a divorce. Needless to say, he'd just got the big promotion to managing director. In his defense however, so far he is being excellent on finances and my friend is unlikely to suffer financially at all. He may well go on to earn squillians now that he's an MD, and she won't see any of that money, but she doesn't care about that. She just wants to be able to live in a nice house with her children and not struggle for money. And to be fair, he seems to be very happy to accomodate this.

That’s still fairer than the taxpayer doing it.

Marriage is still a contract with obligations. You are arguing that the spouse who agreed to focus on unpaid labour to support their household should be penalised for that decision.

But from what I read spousal maintenance is rare as courts prefer a clean break.

It seems in your relative’s situation they cannot get an equitable outcome solely from splitting assets.

During my marriage to my ex I was at times either part time, or a SAHM. We agreed on this together, with the plan being that I would take on the lions share of the housework, and childcare, to facilitate his career progression. Then, once DD1 started school (so childcare was cheaper) I would start up working fulltime again, and exH would take on more of the household and child care duties and ease off on his career for a bit. The end goal being that we would both be earning well, and hopefully have a bit more flexibility.

When the time came, he didn't want to even pick up his share of chores. Our relationship suffered, he became very controlling and eventually abusive, so we divorced. At this point, his earning potential was about 3-4 times what mine was.

I was very lucky in that, we had enough capital to allow me to have a greater share, to set me up with a mortgaged home, with payments I could afford alongside childcare and bills. If that hadn't been the case, we would have looked at maintainence.

His higher earnings weren't just earnt by him. If I hadn't supported him every step of the way, he would not have been able to progress to where he was. He would not earn what he does. He would not have had the pension he has. And I had to start pretty much from scratch. If we hadn't been able to negotiate a clean break from share of assets, do you really think it would have been fair for me to just walk away with next to nothing?

I think these things have to be looked at on a case by case basis. If one partner has contributed very little, then beyond ensuring the DC are adequately housed and cared for in both homes, then they probably don't deserve much. But if both partners have worked as a team to build their lives and livelihood together, then a large discrepancy needs to be taken into consideration.

It’s incredibly depressing to see these poll results on a largely female site.

I don’t know how much of this attitude comes from an abysmal grasp of the cumulative and usually long-term economic impact that even invisible career and financial compromises and sacrifices have on (usually) women in a marriage and how much is just ingrained misogyny, but it’s sad to see.

The courts don’t particularly like awarding spousal maintenance. They do it when that’s the best way to make both parties whole.

But if let’s say parent A earns very little, then the CHILDREN will be suffering from it too.
Can you imagine the situation?
’oh no Joshua, you can’t take those those clothes to A. Theyre staying here’ and the child moving from branded expensive clothing to supermarket stuff every week.
Basic food vs fancy stuff, heating not on (or not as much) etc… on a daily basis.

It’s the child(ren) that would struggle to adjust to that every week.

I don’t think it would be fair tbh.

@Buuddyy To a degree, I agree with you. My ex and DD's dad (not married) refuses to see DD because I won't pay to accommodate it. I don't see why I should. He financially bled me dry during the relationship, chose to quit his job to claim benefits and go back to live with his mother so he didn't have to pay out any of his money. He has absolutely no reasonable outgoings that means he can't afford to contribute to DD's life or to see her, but his drugs, alcohol and gambling habits would take a hit if he chose her. DD hasn't met him nor seen a penny off him, it's unlikely that will ever change.

Why should I work extra hours to pay my own bills, to provide everything for DD aswell as childcare AND also pay for him to see her? I thank god everyday that we were not married.

If you outsourced all the jobs of a SAHM it can easily total around £200k a year to do the same quality of job in the home (cleaner, nanny etc).

So if the working parent wanted to have kids and wanted to have that level of support at home, they'd have to pay handsomely for it. Most working parents could in no way pay to employ someone to do that role with all it entails.

And yet their career benefits from that support. So it needs to be a partnership where everything is split equally and they are given maintenance for the work they enabled the other partner to do.

I'm a high-earning working mother, but I actually think our current split doesn't go far enough for the SAHP. They do such a hard job - the monetary value of it is massive if it was outsourced. The only reason we don't value SAHMs is because the economic value of "women's work" has historically been undervalued due to sexism.

It’s not a fallacy.

If there were children somebody has to look after them and manage the household. (And this assumes he has kids because he wanted kids.)

And if you don’t want to outsource that care to strangers (and many women AND men don’t) then one parent has to take a step back.

I used to work with ex-pats who would do spend weeks at a time out of country. Almost all had SAHP as spouses. For obvious reasons.

I know if I had children and a family to manage I simply could not work the way I do now.

You are missing the point. Marriage is a legally binding union. If I have good earning ability and I sacrifice my earning ability to look after the children that me AND MY PARTNER have agreed to have and that me AND MY PARTNER have agreed are better looked after by me than a nursery, then why should the state pick up the tab for that decision if we split uP? If me and my OH agree that the best thing for our family is for me to sacrifice my earning potential then yeah, my OH should support me. I say this, BTW, as someone who is happily supporting her DP to stay home and look after our kids.

I don't know why this is depressing. Woman who give up work to look after children make a choice. It's notthe tax payer's responsibility to compensate for any financial loss incurred. They certainly haven't gained anything from the non earner's choice. In fact the public purse has lost out as there was no tax contribution. What is depressing is the thought that somebody else will bail them out, I find this quite infuriatingly

This is why I think context is key. There are times when the request is fair. Times when it is not.

That's bs. If I hadn't been at home and on call for him to constantly drop childcare onto plus also to play hostess to his business associates there is no way he would have achieved anything like he did.

What does this have to do with taxpayers?

Also why are you saying the women made a choice? In good partnerships that is a choice the COUPLE make. Not the woman alone.

The public gains a lot from the unpaid labour of SAHP from the attention to children (who aren’t left alone to amuse themselves on the streets when school lets out) reduced need for childcare places, support in schools, support with elder care, volunteering etc.)

But the main person who benefitted is the paid spouse so absolutely they have an obligation not the taxpayer.

Correct, it’s not the taxpayer’s responsibility. It’s the responsibility of the person who benefitted from their unpaid labor and sacrifices during the course of a legally binding partnership. Thus the need for spousal maintenance when it’s not possible to do that through a division of assets.

Absolutely not.

When we had two children and one of them was severely disabled I was forced to give up work whilst DH continued his very demanding career with the same level of professional freedom as he had prior to having children. Every small decision along the way has been ‘whats best for the family’ but it’s all added up to me getting massively set back and disadvantaged in my career and earning potential all whilst DH has flown up the ladder and his pay has almost doubled.

If we divorced you can bet your ass I’d be coming for maintenance and DH knows it and agrees I’d be entitled to it because he sure as shit wouldn’t be earning what he does now without me having been his support act for the past 5 years. In fact, without me he would have lost his job a long time something he openly acknowledges as he simply could not have found the wrap around care (due to disabled DS) so would literally have had to quit if I wasn’t in the picture. So yes. I view his earnings now as something I’m partially entitled to.

I'm not bitter at all. I'm just trying to looking at it from all perspectives.

Whilst you haven't contributed financially if you are a SAHP, there are masses of ways that you have contribute and no doubt saved huge amounts of money by not having to pay for things like childcare or cleaning. The working parent is also able to focus on their career.
During divorce after a long marriages, SAHP have been recognised in the courts for the contribution they have made.
Also, the state should not have to support a divorcee if there is enough from the ex to fund both sides.

Edit - sorry, quoted wrong post

I never said it wasn’t a thing, I said it is very rare in the UK, which is true.

Because the party who got a degree and works a 60 hour week only got to that position and was able to get work those hours because the other party sacrificed their carer and earning potential to allow for that aa such it's only fair that they are supported until their carer is back to the same level as it would have been at that point without that sacrifice