Or do we need new divorce laws

[Justforthisparticularrant]

So I’ve been married for 16 years. Good stable career, pension for 30 years. DH has been self employed. He’s started around five different ventures, always promising he’d need to put work in up front for no or little financial gain. He does so much then it’s onto the new project. He’s not lazy but ineffective in what he does. The promises of his various ventures making money never materialised. He won’t take advice or direction. He’s now doing ok but only in the last five months or so.

My stable income paid the mortgage for a decade and other big costs for our entire marriage. It allowed him the freedom to try out these projects, fail, yet still live a secure comfortable life and raise DC.

Meanwhile, I have battled for the full 16 years for him to take on the domestic load in an equitable way. He’s always done childcare equally and cooking/washing up and laundry has been fairly equal. But everything else has been 90%me for the bulk of our marriage. It’s only the last couple of years it’s been equitable but I’ve had to really campaign and educate him to get there.

But generally speaking, with a bit of nuance, I have been both main breadwinner and main housekeeper with him ‘helping’ around the house rather than taking any initiative and in reality he made it harder for most of those years - creating mess and chaos, ruining things by not looking after them, avoiding planning, sand bagging my attempts to do my best to sort things out and organise them.

It’s improved - but me fighting for fairness in domestic tasks has caused arguments and he’s not happy about it. He martyrs himself a lot - ‘all this work I do…’ etc. He was only working two/three days about four years ago so I pushed him to do more domestic stuff The first couple of weeks of him doing a properly equitable split had him moaning about how exhausted he was, yet six or so years previously when I said the same he minimised it and mocked me given I was only ‘working’ part time at the time. I was actually working 24/7 just lots of it the unseen work of home making etc.

He gets disproportionately angry, verbally abusive and he’s impossible to work with. I’m divorcing him. I’ve had enough and in the last couple of years his behaviour towards the DC has worsened.

I got legal advice and he’s entitled to half my pension. Literally - it will be valued and then half will come out of my pension and a new pension created for him with that in it. ALL of it. Even the 10 years worth from before we met. So despite him not contributing equitably to home making and family raising for the bulk of our time and not being the main breadwinner, he gets half of my entire pension.

I get that this is to protect (largely female) homemakers who work hard at home to support the main breadwinner. But now it’s often women who are the main breadwinners AND the main homemaker.

It just feels so unfair. I’m gutted and feel like this is just another way women get screwed over by the patriarchy.

It’s equality. . If you’re married, all assets are split. 🤷‍♀️

So if a man is the main bread winner, the woman became SAH or part time when kids were young, and then refused to ever go back full time when kids were grown, if they then got divorced say 20 years after that would you be saying she shouldn’t be entitled to 50% of the man’s pension?

If you had divorced him much earlier (or not married at all) then he would be leaving with none or very little f your pension. The cold harsh truth is he’s receiving 50% because you believed that he would change and start working then doing his share.

The laws are reasonable but need using. You accepted his lazy selfishness for 16 years. Had you concluded that he was not prepared to do his fair share, and divorced him after two years, it would be less of an issue.

Your situation is unfair but the laws are not.

As a relatively high earning woman, I lived with my ex for several years before marriage. When it became clear ex was really looking for an unpaid house keeper and bed warmer, and had no intention of being an equal partner, I left.

It's equality.

We have to fight the battle domestically too (eg. Making it clear they should pull their weight)

The divorce laws are unfair but pragmatic

They don’t look at who earned more, paid for more, or did more in the house

They don’t look at who cheated or was abusive or other bad behaviour

They don’t look at the damage done to the SAHP future earning potential by being a SAHP but instead expect them to get a job

If it was all based on fairness they would look at these things BUT it would take ages and be much more traumatic and expensive for everyone

The laws are a blunt instrument designed to produce a clean (ish) break without hours spent arguing about who contributed more or who was more at fault.

Sorry that in this case it is unfair to you. It is probably unfair in a lot of cases but the alternative would be worse.

Firstly, sorry you are going through this. Divorce etc is a horrible time I hope you have real life support.

I think its the whole marriage thing we need to reconsider as a society. I'm so grateful for divorce, its not an exaggeration to say its saved lives. That said it is the breaking of a vow and contract. You have made a promise, 'all that I have I share with you.' On dissolution everything should be split. I don't think people think about the meaning of the vows they take. (Not saying you OP but in general). It is also a promise to stick it out through rough times which people don't want to do, why should they, you have one life but the vow is until death do us part.

Id love someone to take a good look at this and revaluate what is a reasonable contract in this day in age and offer that. You can get married but then its a 50/50 split and hard to divorce or you can get a binding or something which is more legally transparent and can be tailored. Then youre still welcome to your party.

So you think it’s unfair that the law is applied equally to male and female breadwinners?

Am I understanding that correctly?

Flogging a dead horse, however optimistically, for 16 years, is why you’re here. He wasn’t going to change. Sorry it sucks.

Why is it unfair? Because you are a woman? So would it be fair the other way round?

Yeah. May be it’s not the law I’m cross with. It’s the feeling of having been used. And having woken up recently to the fact that he’s not even emotionally supportive at my worst times and is in fact verbally abusive and manipulative it just really sucks. I’ll work on acceptance and letting go. 🙁

But to any younger women who aren’t yet married - learn from my mistakes. He talked a good talk. Presents himself as a feminist and ally to women but underneath it all his view of domestic labour is misogynistic and he sees it as unimportant and below him. He resents doing it but knows he should. Set things up as you mean to go on early on.

Dont accept inequality in domestic arrangements- your uterus and vagina do not mean that you are naturally better at home making, his penis will not get in the way of him carrying the domestic load fully if that works best for you as a family unit.

Read Fair Play by Eve Rodesky.
Learn about the concepts of emotional labour and mental load.
protect yourself financially. Don’t assume things will be fair.

Because he’s consistently made me false promises that his ventures would bring in good money, consistently allowed me to carry the domestic load too. If he’d been the main homemaker it wouldn’t feel unfair at all. It would be right. But I’ve been both to all intents and purposes. But it’s good to have such strong feedback that I’m being unreasonable- it will help me to accept it more quickly.

It’s his consistent letting me down that is what I’m really angry about I guess. If he’d been an equal partner in any respect I’d be fine about it I think.

Fuckity fucking fuck. That’s seriously depressing. But you are right. I had hope. Genuine hope. He did make changes but looking back it was always ‘just enough’ to keep me hanging in there. Hindsight.

You are right to feel it’s unfair in your situation and I say that as a long term SAHM parent who followed my ex around the world for his job and is now expected to be “financially independent” in a very short space of time.

I think you are not unreasonable to be angry at the situation, who wouldn't?

But somehow it would help if you would accept that it was also mistake of trusting him and not protecting yourself earlier and take it as a lesson for future. You won't do that again!

Sadly that is very common and maybe I am thinking wrongly but from what i'm reading / hearing it is usually us women making those. Men are better are protecting themselves.

Hope you will manage to save as much as possible!

No. It’s not that. It’s that it was set up like that to protect women who were the homemakers doing the unseen and unpaid work of home making and child rearing which supported the man to work.

Women now are still doing the bulk of the unpaid and unseen work AND often while doing the breadwinning too.

I have done both to all intents and purposes. But I do get it. The law is fine. It’s my marriage that was unfair. Not the law.

Thanks. I held out hope for change for way too long.

Women always think it will get better and waste more years with manchildren. We need to educate women to get out as soon as it is clear they aren't being supported/ being abused etc.

This is what people should think about before entering into the legal contract of a marriage.

I earn a lot more than DH and am actively encouraging him to go part time and reduce his hours to pursue things that interest him because we can afford it. I am doing that in the confidence that if I was to leave him in future, he has fair access to the wealth I’m continuing to build in my pension and in savings, because we are a partnership while we are together and all wealth we build is joint wealth.

But I wouldn’t have married someone who wasn’t economically contributing without good reason, because I wouldn’t have wanted to entered into a legal agreement on that basis.

So I don’t think the rules should be changed, but legal advice should be mandatory before getting married.

The problem is that for every person that says this (which I agree with), there will always be another person who says "stay together for the kids" "it's not worth breaking up a family for" etc etc

Unfortunately this is why.

Marriage is a legal contract and the provisions get tougher the longer it is.

I do sympathise, my mum was in the same situation with my dad. He did work but jobs never lasted, he was a spender and ran up debt. They were married for 20 years in the end and she had to give him a massive amount of the money she had put into the house, he barely paid anything towards the mortgage. Gutting.

I get that it feels unfair, but I think that is mainly because of his behaviour during the marriage. You not only were the main bread winner but also did most of the domestic work as well.

My ex had to share his Pension on our divorce as I was a STAHM. I did everything at home, plus all admin including arranging mortgages and relocating overseas solo without any input from him. He literally went to work and that was it. He did some DIY, but I did all the decorating and painting.

He is incensed that he has to share his pension “that he worked for”.

I guess a divorce only happens because of some inequality in the marriage - so it’s not surprising if that inequality continues into the divorce.

I obviously support the divorce law as it is, because otherwise I would have been penniless.

I so much regret not having set up a private pension years ago for myself. So now I would recommend any woman in a marriage who is working - start as you mean to go on - make sure you share the domestic burden and both have a private pension.

inequality IN marriage is what causes this, not so much equality in divorce.

Yes. May be it’s marriage itself that needs updating. Although I did fully understand but at that time I didn’t fully understand what kind of person he is or would become. I couldn’t see it and it’s only since a big life event that I’ve realised he’s not actually very nice.

Although to be honest if he’d been a genuinely equal partner and I’d felt it was a fair division of labour I’d not have a problem with it at all. Despite his behaviour. If he’d done his fair share of the domestic stuff it would feel a lot more fair.

One of the large considerations for divorcing my husband was this exact behaviour. I was with him 10 years, married 5. I wasn't prepared to continue on and be worked to death and bled dry. Men can say the same of wives who do this too.

Although it was painful, I was proved right. As an ex husband he is as financially exploitative as he was during the marriage. And a lot of his bitterness comes from the fact I cut him off. I protected my inheritance before it was too late. He was not going to benefit from my parents' life work when he won't. He uses access to my children as punishment. Rotten man.

I really think there should be better education given in society to all people about relationships, implications of marriage (oh and not being married).

Oh OP, I feel for you, but that's what marriage is for: it's a shared partnership of assets to protect you both.

Yes, it sucks, because it is the 16 years of dead-horse flogging that has got you here. Every year your pension contributions were always 50% for you and 50% for him. That's literally the purpose of marriage. Sorry OP