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DeSantis signs bill eliminating permanent alimony
(www.nbcmiami.com)
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this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2023
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Leopards Ate My Face
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That’s not at all how it was argued to me, and I also find it unconvincing. I think it makes sense when a couple together makes a decision that one person won’t work to take care of the home or kids. Fifteen years later if they divorce, the working person is further in their career than they would have been if they’d had to take off time for sick days and more parenting activities (or if they’d had to think about doing their own dry cleaning and packing their own lunches), while the other person is further behind in their career than they were when they left the workforce, and they won’t ever really be able to get back on track. I think alimony makes sense to balance those effects, and if the effects are permanent, I think it should also be permanent. I don’t think it should be 40% of a paycheck (unless that’s actually substantiated by the couple’s financial situation), but whatever makes sense for the couple’s relative incomes.
My thought is that it’s based on the life style that the provider…provides. And maintaining that expectation of having the same quality of life is absurd, especially concerning that the providers will definitely not be able to maintain that quality of life for themselves. Especially in the case of a childless marriage, the other spouse was never removed from the work force unless they chose to be. And the provider may have been happy to sacrifice their life style at the time, but to force it on them after a divorce is wrong to me. And even if there was a child at one point, but has since become an adult i don’t see how one who was working a career should be on the hook for another forever. This basically prevents the one who pays from moving on to make another family due to financial constraints.
I guess where I disagree is that the working parent presumably benefits from the non working parent’s labor. They decide together how their lives look, agree together that less income is worth it for the other benefits of the person staying home, and then afterwards the partner who stayed home has permanently lowered earning potential. Those are fine decisions to make together, but if you split up, the parent who kept working financially benefits and the other is fucked. I don’t think the goal should be to maintain the same lifestyle, because that is going to be impossible (though if there are kids, their lifestyles should change as little as possible), but trying to equalize their changed earning potentials makes sense to me.