Worst decision a woman could make

[Notbeingrobbed]

As a working mother with two children to support, my divorce has made me see that getting married was the worst financial decision I ever made.

I have been the higher earner so will lose a big chunk of the money that I have made throughout my life. I also have the kids to support (happy to).

My ex will get a big payout having benefitted from my income as well as his own for years.

Why would any modern woman marry? Oh, because we are all influenced by society (and hormones) to think it’s a good thing.

People say I am arguing like a man. But the law was surely designed to protect a stay-at-home mother with children from a husband who leaves. Not to protect a layabout-at-home father?

Oh yes, and don’t get me started on pensions! However, I have consoled myself with the thought that when my ex gets Alzheimer’s I won’t have to pay for him to go into a home!

Meanwhile, not wishing to be gender specific, but there is more evidence that while marriage is good for men’s pay, it’s not good for women’s. The figures are skewed, of course, by the SAHMs but as a main-breadwinning woman (by default not necessarily choice) I was aware that we as a family might be doing a lot better if I was a man! It’s interesting that single women earned just as little as married ones, so surely the courts should see that marriage has not “facilitated” my career success.
www.cbsnews.com/news/married-men-earn-far-more-than-any-other-american-group/

I think that divorce is brutal on both sides, tbh. The idea that the same pot of money that funded one household can now fund two at the same level is patently untrue. I imagine that if your ex spouses were asked, many of them would feel hard done by too. In my case, I got 55% of the assets and I know my ex feels ripped off. I feel aggrieved too, however, as I'd have preferred 50:50 and shared financial responsibility for the children. As it is, I got left with school fees, the vast majority of the parenting and trying to build a career from nothing, my main source of income disappearing in the divorce. My son has, finally, been diagnosed with a long term health issue that makes working extremely challenging too.

Men often feel that working full time means they lose in terms of contact with their children on divorce as courts favour the status quo so if the woman is a SAHP they'll see their children eow and one night in the week. There have been a number of posts on mumsnet recently by working mothers worrying about separating from men who are SAHP and how to avoid losing their children.

The Scottish system looks pretty brutal to me. 50:50 split and very limited spousal. I challenge anyone to build a career in a few years from a standing start, especially with primary responsibility for children.

Australia has gone down the 50:50 route for children too.

Fwiw, I've told my children to think about what they want from their futures in terms of children as well as careers to ensure they don't end up in either extreme but I don't know how they avoid it given the way society currently operates. Prophetically I said to my ex, probably 30 odd years ago, that we, as a society, need to come up with better ways of doing this as divorce is brutal on everyone, but the children ultimately suffer the most.

M0vin, you married her! And you say she was always like that. Honestly the important choice is who you marry. Why didn’t you marry someone offering you more in terms of equality? It was your choice.

For me, as the high earner and the one who brought a house deposit into what I thought was going to be the happiest partnership of my life - it kills me to think I might be asked to continue to work full time, but manage childcare on my own, pay the mortgage and other bills, and then give money to my ex (who earns a respectable £33k himself already) purely because that money is "available" - its only available because I earn it?? There's barely any equity so Im fully prepared to bargain hard to keep my house - es admitted to marrying me and staying with me plus having children in order to get a better financial deal. How is that fair? He's deemed a risk to our children so I am now just the wrong side of 40 with 4 children - realistically Im probably not a great catch for a future partner and I couldn't think of any thing I would rather do less right now than meet someone - but he's off living his life with the slapper he was having an affair with (2nd that I know about), and then wanting to claim an income from me - purely because we were married. It feels very unfair that I have to work to pay for him to have a lifestyle like we had when we were married because mine has been cut to existing to work or spend time with my children. I last went out with friends 6 months ago... :(

@Flower64 you could be me. We should be marching on Parliament...if any of us had the free time! I feel your pain.

So basically you want the institution of marriage to take responsibility for your decisions in life? I know hindsight is a great thing but honestly, marriage is an important commitment that is on offer to people. You don’t have to take it, or have children (that are also a serious commitment) with ANYONE! There’s your protection. But you can’t expect marriage to sort it out for you when it turns out you’ve made some bad choices.

What people need is to be educated on what they are actually signing up to when both marrying and having children with another individual. It IS a business transaction but importantly also an emotional one. You’re tying yourself to someone else. You don’t have to do it. But diluting marriage for everyone just so you have a better get out clause renders the institution of marriage meaningless. So what’s the point in that?

(I do get that I have a different opinion on this topic most likely due to having had the privilege of growing up surrounded by good, strong marriages of parents, grandparents and aunts and uncles. My DHs upbringing is the same. I do know that nobody is immune to marital trouble but we can at least vaccinate against it).

Hideandgo I was married. It offered me zero protection. I had nothing and the solicitor told me my best option was to expect nothing.
Perhaps if you are a wealthy couple it does offer what you say, but for me it cost me everything.
It's wonderful to say you should be careful who you marry, I wish life was that simple. I thought he was perfect in every way. After 12 years he just went off me but didn't want to tell me I suppose. But yeah thanks for all the debt hubby

You may think I'm naive but my experience has tainted the idea of marriage. I too have family who have been in strong marriages had difficulties but worked through them. I'm the only divorcee.

But if you marry 'equally' then the rich/poor divide occurs

Money has nearly always married money.

The poor always nearly marry the poor

Then the cycle continues

@Hideandgo take off the rose tinted glasses. I’m glad your parents, uncles and aunties were happy. My parents were well suited and had a long and happy marriage and I hoped for the same.

BUT think how low the divorce rate was in their day...how divorcees were stigmatised and left outside of everyday society. For every happy marriage there were the hidden miseries - people stuck married to alcoholics, drug addicts, gamblers, beaters, closet LGBT (not meaning to offend anyone but people couldn’t come out so tried to conform), fetishists, paedophiles and last but not least plain old philanderers. Most people were trapped in these situations for the sake of appearances. Women most of all because their earning potential was so limited. Remember, in our grandmothers’ day a married woman had to give up work.

I’m sure slavery suited the slave owners very well but that didn’t make it right!

I used to think marriage was the bedrock of society but you only tend to believe that when it’s working for you.

What is it really? A property arrangement created by men where a daughter was given away to a man for payment (a dowry) to get rid of her.

And as for choice....the marriage “market” is hardly a level playing field! So much depends on the social circles you are in, your own self-esteem and in the end how much of a looker you are. Doesn’t it?

You still ultimately have choice. So instead of picking apart marriage, pick apart potential husbands and wives. Take responsibility for both finding an equal partner and being an equal partner. Making marriage mean nothing really is essentially removing marriage as a possibility for people. What are you left with if you take away the legal ramifications of a marriage? Exactly what people who don’t marry have.

When I married I considered all my assets and property to be a gift to him and visa versa. If things don’t work out I don’t expect to just take that gift back. I will live with my decision to marry and give away everything then. That was the decision and commitment I made. People have to take responsibility for their own choices here, and maybe take very seriously their decision to marry in the first place.

By the way I do think divorce is an absolutely critical right. I wouldn’t see anyone stay in a marriage even just for unhappiness let alone the whole range of abuses people suffer within a marriage. But actually the way the legal aspects of marriage currently work at least give some vulnerable people something when they finally leave compared to what this thread seems to be proposing.

So for all those people who have lost half their assets and pensions to an ex, there are ex’s who deserve that half no matter what a bitter pill the wealthier side finds it. And again, ultimately they both made that choice to tie their lives financially so I can’t feel too sorry for the (usually man) who has had to hand over half his pension.

If you don’t want to risk your ‘hard earned’ assets, then nobody is making you get married. And if you want the protection and commitment of marriage, nobody is forcing you to stay with and have kids with that partner who won’t risk marrying you. It’s never that simple but it is a choice for the individual nonetheless.

Why should it be half? Take out what you put in, that would be fair! Two people earning should be able to split assets according to the percentages contributed by their salaries. And if one gives up work there should be a written agreement about that, with the expectation that both will earn if children are over seven.

As long as the system persists as it does then fewer and fewer people will marry. So your beloved institution will mean less and less.

If I was sold weed killer for my garden and it later gave me cancer it wouldn’t be my choice that was to blame. It would be that it had been tested, approved and licenced and all seemed well at that time but later the hazard was discovered. Same with a shoddy husband.

You simply can’t quantify all the little things that happen in marriage to allocate the leaving money fairly. One gambles, one buys a lot of clothes, one went part time for their own sick parent, or for their sick MIL, one is a better cook so took on the habit of getting home to do dinner instead of staying late and ultimately getting that promotion, one goes self employed and the other supplements for 3 yrs till they found their feet, one had 3 months off work for MH reasons etc etc. All that affects the pot so how do you work out fairness?

Though maybe they should try rather than going 50/50. I don’t think it’s practical and there will nearly always be a loser regardless. Christ, just think of the extra courts they’d need to build to deal with the detail wrangling. Ironically my DH is a divorce lawyer, we’d do ok out of it.

All those points could be quantified as much as all the details on form e are already quantified. Obviously the best solution is not to marry in the first place, as I said at the start. Then your DH will be out of work!

I suppose the ideal money-spinning combo would be a wedding planned married to a divorce lawyer!

I like it! Hedge our risk!

Unless you get your way and do away with marriage completely if course!

Then we’re both fucked. So maybe a better hedge is that I keep my current job.

Mine was abusive and financially abusive. I have had a huge fight to keep hold of my house. I wish I had received a caution or someone reading me my rights before I got married!

Maybe there should be a legal disclaimer handed out to both parties to read along with their marriage very application. Like the banks have to give you.

Very = cert

I actually think the big family ceremony is designed to keep you together and “working at it in difficult times”. But it also shames people into staying in abusive, desperately miserable situations. Because having taken our vows in front of our elderly aunties we don’t want them gossiping about how “we” have failed...even if the other party was at fault.

The current financial laws were put in place by a combination of feminist campaigners and ridiculous Supreme Court judgements won by extremely rich mainly foreign origin wives that made the U.K. the world divorce capital. I know a former colleague that had a marriage that was having a tricky time. I think they would have come through it but he made the decision to initiate divorce proceedings prior to reform of how pensions were treated. I bet his wife was really happy at that!. The origins of current laws were built around totally advantaging women...and there have been plenty that needed protecting as well and now have less chance of being left destitute. But there are also plenty of men being left fairly broke whilst the ex wife lives in a nice house, spousal maintenance etc and it all seems unfair. Im glad it now seems the pendulum is now swinging back with the expectation that the lower earning partner(usually women) cannot expect a meal ticket for life and why should they. I know of someone (female) who has just had that message from her solicitor after having her hopes built up by mates in the screw the bastard brigade. It seems the reality is gradually moving to something more like common sense

The whole marriage laws are a mess, from the grounds to get divorced to splitting assets and maintenance. All it does is cause awful conflicts and guess what....more and more men decline to get married...hence the advice you keep seeing in MN from posters advising women to get married to protect themselves......how awful and what self respecting women would really want to do that. Oh...I am married by the way.

Maybe big puffy dresses, balloon arches and flowers should be banned at the ceremony. Instead everyone should wear black. A financial adviser should stand up at the start and read out a very long statement along the lines of “please be aware not a penny you earn is yours alone from now on, marriages can go down as well as up and don’t even think you’re ever going to be able to retire etc”. The service papers should carry a massive warning on the front just like a cigarette packet with pictures of abandoned parents selling up their family home. Cakes should also be banned - instead a “lucky” sweep could turn up and steal a few of your worldly goods as a warning of what is to come! The wedding breakfast would be beans on toast. Could make a good sketch.