Rachel Cusk - why is she having to support her dh following her divorce?

[mrsreplicant]

Sorry to be naive - have never done divorce myself. She seems to be saying that because her dh gave up his job to look after the dc, she will always have to support him now that they are divorced/ing. [?] From what I read, it sounds like she will have to support him even after the dc are grown up.

Can anyone elaborate?

I think she was very sparing in the concrete details she revealed of her children. I think she actually revealed far more of herself ('warts and all' style) every time she mentioned them. There was a lot of projection when she wrote about their feelings.

I agree. YOu can present things to children - wow everything is so much better now, aren't you lucky, two sets of Christmas present, so much more space for your things, toys at two houses, life is so much better, mummy is smiling all the time and daddy is great. Or you can mope and moan and make them suffer. They often mirror the mood of the parent.

Even so she writes well.

Never read her books, but back to the original question - if Cusk has made a lot of money from books, then the proceeds from those books would be part of any settlement. However the royalties come in for years, in which case he would probably be entitled to a proportion of the proceeds of those books that were written during the marriage for as long as they continued to sell and make money. That would be at least part of the reason for the open ended nature of the settlement.

Oh, interesting; thanks.

1. The courts like to achieve a clean break but most people cannot afford it. A clean break is a division of assets and that hopefully levaes you both able to support yourselves. Paul McCartney achieved a clean break. They worked out his ex wife needed £800k a year to maintain her standard of living in the marriage and worked out what capital sum from him would generate that and she got that sum. No on going maintenance. My husband wanted maintenance for life and half the assets and he got more than half but I bought out the maintenance (I earned 10x what he did) and he worked full time and we could divide our joint assets and that lump sum was enough to buy out those claims.

1. I would imagine the Cusks just had a house and not much else. I was speaking to someone who earns about a lot a year but has very little capital. They cannot afford a clean break with their wife so she will bke getting (as he was stupid enough to marry a low earner and then let her become a housewife) £60k a year until the pensions kick in and then half his pensions.

So Ms Cusk did not have enough money to buy out her husband's maintenance claims one assumes.

Thank you; it's all much clearer now.

In your 2nd point, Xenia, will the ex-wife continue to get the £60K plus half his pensions whether or not she goes into another relationship or marriage?

Spose that's a daft Q...is it?

Oh, I love this thread. Haven't been on mn for a while. It reminds me why it's so great. Thanks to MI and some other hilarious and spot on posts.

mrs r, no. If she remarries she loses the £60k as the courts regard lower earners as kept people like women owned in Saudi etc. The idea of paying maintenance to an adult who is too idle to work is iniquitous. If you were a minimum wage earner who married someone who did well why can't you go back to your minimum wage when you spilt up. Why shoudl you morally get a financial boost for life when you didn't create or enable that partner's wealth particularly if the lower earner never gave up work, they just aren't able to earn more.

In my contact's case he is very keen his wife remarries and jokes about trusting her at every possible suitor but she's fat, working class and not worked for 30 y ears so he thinks the chances of her finding Mr right and giving up the £60k is very very unlikely.

When the pensions are drawn her £60k ceases and she draws half of what would have been his pensions.

The maintenance v will the spouse remarry issue is a dilemma for many of those with high incomes and some assets. if you thnk the lower earner will move seamless on to fleecing another poor sucker financially then you're better off with a lower capital settlement and no clean break. If you think they would never remarry sand particularly if you think you're coming into some money or will earn a lot or do a lot of deals then you're better off getting a clean break so there are no future financial claims.

A wife of a barrister last year got more money something like 25 years after their divorce as they had never had a clean break. She could keep coming back for more. The courts prefer clean breaks as it's all over and done with . As the average wage is £20k and most people hardly have a bean clean breaks can be quite rare if there are yong chidlren at home and a house you cannot sell now so you can end up tied together with an obligatio to sell the house when the youngest is 18.

Thanks, Xenia, I knew you'd set me right.

Does it have to be marriage to lose the £60K? What if she moved in with someone and was supported by him? Presumably the man would have to try to prove that she had a new means of support, which could be tricky?

I find it all a bit upsetting tbh. You know, the calculations you should ideally make before your marriage started falling apart. Yet to be all loved up and not think about these things is obviously asking for trouble, potentially, further down the line.

Good lord, Xenia, how did he ever put up with a fat working-class gold-digging layabout for such a long time? Give that selfless man a halo.

Coming to this late, and know this is from DM, but think is interesting background on RC's marriage (which she is busy laying open for us all to comment on via Guardian, DT etc) www.dailymail.co.uk/home/books/article-367512/Saving-Rachel-Cusk.html

I think they were childhood sweeahearts, ma and he's not trying to avoid paying her to sit at home and do nothing for life. He's not slim either. They presumably sit at home eating donuts or whatever the working class tend to do to get themselves to the weights they often are.

Brrr, fascinating. That is how the books come over too. She writes well and I liked A Life's Work. I buy it for potential new parents and it does show what being a parent is like in a way glossy baby magazines do not. I did not know she had first married a banker. Banker then lawyer - a pattern - wanting a man to support her, not feminist. Interesting or may be just luck because she wants someone clever if she is clever.

I like people the opposite of who you describe, including some very successful and powerful who can make everyone feel at their ease. You look at how people treat the least important person in the room and determine what they are like by that often. It does not sound as though she would pass that test.

I suspect writers do tend to be fairly insular.I am sure I wrote books as a teenager in part because I was shy. I don't think I'm like that now (and I have written 30 books but not of the kind of Cusk's and I'm not a writer, it's a sideline).

I think she would benefit from more revision of the books when written. The latest one is (a) far too short (b) seemed to move from one topic to another although yes generally charting the period of breakdown to separation etc, without enough structure and I would have liked more personal revelation but I don't know what confidentiality clauses she and her ex husband have in their settlement agreement.
If she was divorced befoer from a banker may be some of the equity in the house she presumably now has to share with her ex lawyer photographer husband came from that.

The latest book charts her inability to eat which comes over as selfish too as the victims in divorce or children and it behoves adults to keep it together and eat.

It sounds as if how she appeared to be reflects more on her than anyone else present.

The skill to make every one feel good, to be warm, to smile, to give attention even to hangers on in a room who might seem unimportant is a great one to acquire.

Brrrrr, don't take it to heart! My dp works with her and everything you say is the universal experience

Just as this thread has bobbed up again, I'll add that I've now read the Aftermath book, and the extracts published in the press are a bit of a travesty in comparison, to the extent that I wonder whether Cusk can possibly have pre-approved them. The memoir in full is much more comprehensible on the most basic level, and her style feels less forced and choppy.

For those wondering about whether there are more intrusive revelations about her former husband and children in the book - no. The moments which made it into every extract - about realising that her husband hated her, and when her daughter said she had two homes and no home - are pretty much it. The ex-husband literally never appears again, and why they separate is never discussed.

I don't think it lives up to her best work - I've always thought she's a better novelist than she is a fiction writer - but it's disturbing and honest. I think that the not-particularly-attractive, resentful, irrational, self-starving version of herself that she chooses to write about is pretty courageous. People seem to be assuming that Cusk approves of herself simply because she's written a book about her own responses to separation, but I think it's very obvious that she's trying to chart her own responses, warts and all, without approving of them - the 'the children belong to me' and 'I shouldn't have to support him' moments are examples of that. What she was feeling, rather than what she should have been feeling (like her book about motherhood).

Brrr, I've also met her and agree she's difficult in person, but as I am also fairly dour, it didn't bother me. It wasn't a reading or signing, so I didn't feel she had to lay herself out to be pleasant. I also met her ex-husband on the same occasion, and he was much socially easier and more obviously likeable, he struck me as having issues of his own. He did talk then about how he had just changed careers to combine photography and the care of their children (he also had a daughter from a previous marriage), and seemed very positive about it.

(Brrr, you don't have to answer this, but your encounter wasn't in an external examining situation, was it? In which case, well done!)

(And thanks, by the way! :) )

She's clearly in possession of a formidable intellect Brr I have no doubt that RC is very bright, but the feeling I got from the Guardian extract and I accept that this has clearly been shoved together so is not entirely representative of her thought patterns is that she is in a panic about making sure everyone knows this. On that basis, I would suggest her taciturn response to you suggested she felt she'd met an equal!