Men and women, along with their legal right to marry (as one of a binary of sexes and marrying the other of that binary of sexes, but we'll get into that some other time), have a legal right to divorce. And upon divorcing, thanks to the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act of 1970, both men and women have the right to ask for alimony payments upon divorce if they were financially dependent upon their spouses. Curiously, though, men seem not to request alimony nearly as often as women do. The reasons are likely to be social: any man facing a divorce will likely speak to a well-informed lawyer, so we can't assume that men are simply unaware of their rights.
It's truly a shame that pressure on men to be breadwinners might prevent them from fighting for much-needed financial support.
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Not strictly for the sake of being contrary, but for a significant amount of divorced parents of my friends, the woman is the one paying alimony. I have a lot of friends with very empowered bread-winning mothers and fathers who are cool dudes and got custody and therefore require the support.
ReplyDeleteI would have been the one paying alimony, and that would have been extremely unfair.
ReplyDelete"Manimony?" Really? That can't be helping.
ReplyDelete