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Comment by Notorious_PWN | Hacker News Reader

My blood pressure went way up when I found out how brutally he is being raped by the alimony system. He'd be better off in a technical field where skills matter more than reputation; he could change his identity.

Assets earned during the marriage are earned by the couple and should be equitably split, but child support should be no more than 1/2 the minimum cost of raising a child (of course, if the father's not a prick, he'll contribute much more; but the govt. should not require him to) and alimony should not exist.

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The injustice is when the court strips the father of custody and then forces him to pay child support. Child support should only be required if the father voluntarily renounces custody. Otherwise, custody should be split equally and no child support should be owed by either party.

Also, everyone would be better off if these contingencies were all written into contract before marriage/child birth. It would save everyone a lot pain. Unfortunately, the judicial system has gradually replaced our great tradition of contract law with arbitrary rule by judges, much to the loss of everyone.

Nothing says "I love you" like a prenup. There is a very good reason why they aren't that common.

Nothing says "nice to have you on board" as "here's your vesting schedule and you've got a one year cliff", but it's still a good idea to do.

I think a lot of the problems with prenups is a chicken and egg sort of thing. If they were a standard part of the process they'd be less offensive.

I'd actually like to see pre-nups made into law. If you don't make one yourself, you get a pre-nup that says what already happens now when you divorce - but you have to sign it and acknowledge - "yes, I want to be raped in the ass if he/she leaves me". That might remove some of the emotion and distill a bit of clarity.

The thing is pre-nups aren't always enforcible. The major reason is that no one makes provisions for hitting the jackpot (either literally or founding a business that makes you rich), or that if one person does the partner can contest it in court as an unforeseeable circumstance. This usually ends up falling under the 'unconscionable' clause in the law.

Then there has to be full and/or fair disclosure (your spouse needs to know about that $50,000 you have put away). The other (possibly the easiest reason why prenups can fall apart) is that the agreement has to be entered upon voluntarily by both parties, so if your spouse only agreed to the pre-nup because you threatened a break up then the pre-nup is automatically void.

The sad thing is that if pre-nups were made into law then they would never be enforceable, because everyone would have been forced into them under duress. How can you voluntarily sign an agreement when it could prevent you from being legally married.

The other (possibly the easiest reason why prenups can fall apart) is that the agreement has to be entered upon voluntarily by both parties, so if your spouse only agreed to the pre-nup because you threatened a break up then the pre-nup is automatically void.

This is the heart of the matter. The courts have redefined the word "voluntary" in an unbelievably Orwellian way.

Exactly. If prenups were required by law there would be no emotional baggage in bringing up the topic.

We need fewer laws related to marriage, not more.

Agreed! A legal obligation to do a prenup would be like a law protecting you from the law... Perhaps you can scrap the laws about custody, alimony, etc. in the first place and let people figure it out by themselves.

Or you could just scrape the laws about custody, alimony, etc. and just let people figure it out for themselves. If the child is old enough (say >8 yo) ask them which parent they want to stay with.

Younger, and let people just figure it out.

This isn't a bad analogy but it leaks a fair bit.

Many, almost all?, people go to work for a company thinking that they'll spend a specified amound of time with it. Very few people that I know think that they'll spend their entire life there.

In fact in the financial industry it's a very accepted practice to jump around from company to company.

Even in the tech industry there are many people who graduate with a plan to work for a Google or Microsoft for a few years to get experience and then plan to go out on their own or to join another startup.

Contrast this with marriage were very few people go in thinking that their marrige is only a 4 year commitment and that they'll get divorced and trade up every 5 years.

Negotiation over dowry was once a part of the process in America, and it still is in much of the world.

Marriage is very much a business relationship. I don't know when it turned awkward to acknowledge this fact.

It turned awkward when people started taking considerations other than business into account, such as "love". I believe Wolfram Alpha has an article on it.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=love&a=*C.love-_*Wo...

It's usually seen as a matter of trust. I consider the phrase "I trust you absolutely" not only pretty stupid but incredibly arrogant - you are not only saying you trust the other (which is good and reasonable) but you are also saying you could not be mistaken (which is foolish). Trust, but be prepared for being wrong in doing so.

My understanding is that alimony is quite distinct from child support. Rather it is payments made directly to a former spouse and harks back to a time when women had no way to support themselves after a divorce (they could not work and probably had little chance of remarriage). So the idea was that the alimony would continue to support them as if they were still married.

I have no idea why it still exists, however.

Actually, child support is also payments made directly to a former spouse. While in principle it said to be for support of the children, there is no requirement that it be used for such purpose (let alone an enforcement mechanism).

This is a problem. I'm guessing most dads would give any amount for their kids, if it was guaranteed to go to the kids. There has to be some type of enforceable method to track payments and how they are used for the benefit of the children.

I'm guessing most dads would give any amount for their kids, if it was guaranteed to go to the kids.

I know an alarming number of counterexamples.

As do I, sadly.

worse is when you are paying alimony to a remarried wife. (Note, I do not do this so I may be wrong, but I've heard horror stories).

I guess that's allowed so that a certain class of spoiled American female can live the archetypal slut's dream of fucking an alpha male while a beta male provides for her.

I think most states stop alimony when she remarries, though, which is why women who want to play that game will have live-in boyfriends but not remarry.

Cursing aside, this is very much a reality.

I believe some states even stop alimony at the advent of cohabitation of the supported party with another.

Slander aside, this is very much a reality.

very eloquently stated...

Petty sexism FTW.

oh god... not you again.

More confusing is that this guy is claiming that his alimony payments are more than 2/3 of his take-home income. I think he meant child-support.

Even more confusing, you didn't read the article:

> I was handing over $4,000 a month in alimony and child-support payments

So no, he did mean alimony and child-support.

> how brutally he is being raped by the alimony system

What I don't understand is how we almost never hear of such people packing up and moving to some country which is hostile to US interests, or simply has weak record-keeping and is thus friendly to those who want to leave their past behind. Are all such countries mournful hellholes to live in? Surely not.

Seriously, if I were ever sentenced to the perpetual confiscation of over half of my income, I would run off - doesn't matter much where to. Perhaps the Somalian pirates - or North Korea - are hiring? I also recall once reading that France will not extradite a French citizen - perhaps you can become one? (They might still allow American debt collectors to find you, however. Does anyone know?) Seriously, just about any life is better than being a part-time slave, which is what such extortion amounts to.

> What I don't understand is how we almost never hear of such people packing up and moving to some country which is hostile to US interests

http://roissy.wordpress.com/2009/05/15/hero/

What part of "don't come back and vacation in the country which screwed up your life" didn't this man understand?

The middle part.

Also, the beginning and end.

A) You're thinking of the Foreign Legion. Go look it up. A few years of military service and you're in.

B) When you get married you're making a very serious promise to share everything and build a life together. The state provided default contract for a marriage is very clear about the separation terms up front. If you don't like them, then negotiate a pre-nup with your spouse.

Good luck.

A) The Foreign Legion has much tighter regulations now, and is no longer suitable for its traditional purpose of providing new identities for those with something to run from.

B) US courts routinely and capriciously invalidate pre-nups.

I would argue that he is a full-time slave. Part of his time goes to pay for his previous marriage, the other part for taxes, and the final part to the banking system.

Funny how the notion of simply paying back your debt becomes "enslavement" by the "banking system" in the minds of people these days. t's as ridiculous as a fat person blaming the food companies to make it easy to overeat. The author of the article is commendable for avoiding these loaded terms and blaming himself rather than circumstances or even other people. It's a trite phrase but still true that responsibility and prudence is the flipside of freedom and risk-taking.

Oh, but if you get a loan at 10% or 15% interest and are late on a different loan you can get a universal default where your rate is doubled to 20 or 30%. Also the credit card companies have successfully lobbied the government to make it harder for consumers to erase these debts with bankruptcy.

> Funny how the notion of simply paying back your debt becomes "enslavement"

Yeah, let's bring back Victorian work-houses. I sincerely hope that you and your family end up in one.

The difference is, except for taxes, he chose to make those decisions. Slaves did not choose to be slaves.

That difference is mostly irrelevant. Slavery entered into with consent is still slavery. The key part of slavery is not the path of entry, but the path of exit, in that you don't get to exit.

There is very little functional difference between this guy and a bonded laborer from pre-independence India.

Would the laborer have been transported, on such a long voyage, without the reasonable assurance of payback? If they'd been left behind, stranded far away from the "land of opportunity," would they have been better off? I'd guess no on both. There's a reason immigrants flocked to America, event with a pledge of service.

So quit with this slavery nonsense. Slavery is not slavery when opted for, in full knowledge. Likewise, honest mortgages are no more slavery than education loans.

You are suggesting that available of opportunity and future outcome make slavery ok. I do not believe that. I guess we just have fundamentally different world views.

Honest mortgages and education loans are not slavery. Intentionally ignoring checks to economically subjugate someone... I am not gonna call that slavery but it's really not that far from it or at least thats how I see it.

> You are suggesting that available of opportunity and future outcome make slavery ok.

No, he's suggesting that consent makes a situation that looks like slavery not slavery at all.

Ooops... availability* My bad...

Anyway, what has

> If they'd been left behind, stranded far away from the "land of opportunity," would they have been better off?

got to do with consent?

That apart, informed consent cannot nullify a crime. That is a well accepted principle. You cannot give informed consent for murder and such stuff. There is a libertarian school of thought that wants to change that but I don't subscribe to that school of thought. Slavery under consent is just as much a violation of human dignity and just as much a crime as far as my views are concerned.

It isn't "opportunity" without consent.

That apart, informed consent cannot nullify a crime. That is a well accepted principle. You cannot give informed consent for murder and such stuff.

If there's consent, there's no crime, though. You can't give informed consent for murder because if you gave informed consent, it's not murder, but "assisted suicide" or some such. Current law has lots of victimless and presumed-victim crimes, it's true, but I don't subscribe to that school of thought. :)

On the other hand, the Libertarian definition of "consent" is repulsive to me. From their point of view, I "consent" to spend my prime waking hours working on things other than my own (non-monetizable) inventions. Bullshit. It isn't consent unless I have entirely unconstrained choice, and the need to pay for food and shelter is every bit as much of a constraint as the laws of a brutal dictatorship. And I simply don't care if basic goods are expensive because an evil central planner priced them nearly out of my reach, or whether the market had bid them up. The net effect on my life is entirely the same.

Screw Libertarian "consent." Screw their "non-coercion." They are Orwellian concepts: their in-practice meanings in that ideology allow for the exact opposites of what those words mean in everyday language to slide through and flourish.

The need for food and shelter are not things that other people impose on you; you'd have those needs even if you were the only person around. Just sayin'.

> you'd have those needs even if you were the only person around

This is only partially true. Food (and, due to the existence of land ownership, shelter) is more scarce today (in the sense of requiring more effort to obtain) than in the age of hunter-gatherers.

Not to mention, the need for "shelter" in a heavily populated world implies as much the need for protection from other people as for protection from the elements. Thus, in a very real sense, it is a need imposed on me by other people. Even the need for protection from the elements falls into this category. If there were few enough people, everyone could (theoretically) live comfortably in those parts of the world which have a temperate climate year-round.

What's the solution then? To not let people make decisions that could potentially be bad?

That sounds like it's slavery too.

> What's the solution then?

One solution would be to put an end to usury. Houses, cars, etc. will have to become far more modest, but in the end they will be affordable without debt slavery.

I live in a house without having debt. I could also pay cash for a car.

People should have the choice to borrow money from other people, and the people lending it should be able to make enough money to make up for the risk of the people they lend it to not paying it back. I don't think society needs to change, though.

No. De-incentivize the lender. Create better exit situations for the borrower there by making such activity extremely unattractive for the lender.

Spend tax dollars educating and discouraging the borrower. This is valid because such conditions hurt the nation in the long run.

> Slaves did not choose to be slaves.

Quite often false, in the ancient world. Debt slavery is probably as old as mankind.

Guys who seriously consider moving to somalia or north korea to avoid alimony payments usually don't have to worry about getting married in the first place. It's hard to meet a spouse in your parents' basement.

I'm sure those two wouldn't be first on his list..

well, they are the only two places he mentioned in his comment...

Well, then, I guess the question is whether those two are the only places he could have mentioned (fitting his criteria of not being particularly friendly with the US).

They are the two most absurdly obvious ones. Finding foreign havens which are of practical, rather than rhetorical use requires research: laws change, treaties are signed, armies invade, etc.

I think $4k a month isn't overboard for 3 teenage boys, especially if you factor in school & health care. As for the Alimony, it depends, if the wife had stayed at home for the past 21 years to raise the children and has no skills/experience to fall back on to support them herself, then yeah, he needs to support her as well as pay the full cost of raising his sons.

I think it's a sad state of affairs in divorce courts and that fathers usually get the short end of the stick, too

But I don't understand why cjbos is getting downmodded for making a valid argument that $4k isn't that much money to raise a 4-person family.

IF the author points out that his ex-wife is now re-married, or is working and bringing home more than $4k blah blah blah, then yes, evil witch, bad system. But let's not jump to judgment here, guys, especially when the author himself hasn't vilify this woman.

With all due respect, if she's not working, _why the hell not_? She has custody of her children. That doesn't mean the man in the marriage should be stuck paying her total living expenses.

Sort of the "one good deed requires another" system, there? :)

Yes -- but he should be left with $2777 per month to live on? You basically can't live on that sum of money on the east coast unless you want to live a collegiate existence.

$2777 take home equates to about $47,500 gross per year (adding the taxes paid back in). The per capita income in New York state in 2005 was $40k. I suspect now it's around $43-45k.

Well his wife and 3 teenage sons have only $4k a month to live on on the east coast ($1k per person).

He has almost 3 times the disposable income as his wife in reality.

> Well his wife and 3 teenage sons have only $4k a month to live on

... and whatever she earns.

Taking care of teenagers after school is not a full time job.

I think $4k a month isn't overboard for 3 teenage boys, especially if you factor in school & health care.

Health coverage should really be provided by the government, but that's a separate issue. Also, individual health insurance on teenage boys is going to be cheap: closer to $150 per month than $1000/month.

School is provided by the government, for 12 years. College, on the other hand, is ridiculously expensive, but if the government isn't forcing married couples to pay for it (I know some $100-300k couples who paid nothing) it doesn't have a leg to stand on in forcing divorced parents to pay for it.

If the government provided health care, he'd still be paying for it, with his taxes.

And so would you and I. I don't have any kids, but I'd be paying for the health care of everyone that does.

> My blood pressure went way up when I found out how brutally he is being raped by the alimony system

Agree. I was really impressed that he managed not to express any bitterness towards his ex-wife in the article. That says a lot about his character.

I must admit the attitude of his new spouse also made my blood pressure rise.

> child support should be no more than 1/2 the minimum cost of raising a child

Am I a horrible sexist if I disagree with this?

I'm afraid so. How often do the courts grant the father custody? If the mother can't support herself and them, then they should go to the father, end of. But for some mysterious reason that almost never happens...

Not sexist, but you're wrong.

Child support should represent the minimum acceptable contribution of the non-custodial parent (father, in the vast majority of cases) to the child's welfare. Should he contribute a lot more, in cash, gifts, and college support? Absolutely. I would. However, the government shouldn't require him to do so, and the spending should be at his discretion. Right now, that freedom is completely taken away. The custodial parent should not be getting a huge check and the freedom to spend the money however she wants. If I end up having a kid with a wife who divorces me to live it up with an illiterate biker, those CS payments damn better be going to the kid's college, not her beau's lottery-ticket budget.

It's a bizarre inconsistency. Parents can stay married and financially neglect their children. They can make $300k combined per year and still refuse to pay for their kids' college. Yet, if they divorce, the one parent who rarely sees the kids (usually father) is forced not to pay up merely to the minimum level of decency, but far beyond that if he's "rich" like the article's author.

The actual expense of raising children involves the time spent and associated opportunity cost.

Which often the father wants to give but the court grants custody to the mother. And then he is forced to pay alimony as well.

Note that if you have a child out of wedlock the same things do not apply. Moral hazard anyone?

Wait, what?

Of course you pay child support if you fathered the kid, regardless if you married the mother or not. It's the whole point of Maury Povich "You Are Not The Father" episodes.

> Of course you pay child support if you fathered the kid

But not alimony?

Right, which are two different things

Yes there are time and opportunity costs paid by the custodial parent. However, a custodial parent also gets significant benefits that the non-custodial parent doesn't get. (Otherwise, why fight for custody?) Surely it's fair to take those into account as well.

The counterargument says that a marriage is basically an agreement where the woman agrees to lend her womb to a man in exchange for him supporting her and her children.

That's way too sexist for me (if that's what marriage is, then we should change it,) but I'm still not convinced that a man should be allowed to leave and only provide half the minimum support for his children. It seems like the woman is seriously getting screwed in that situation: she has to raise the kids on her own AND find > 1/2 the money to support them. Nobody gets married with that understanding, and nobody wants to.

Nobody gets married with that understanding, and nobody wants to.

If she thinks he might be a shitty father who only contributes the minimum, then she shouldn't marry him or have kids with him.

I think the standard suggestion amounts to women generally wanting to find a strong/smart fellow to contribute genes, and then a reliable sucker to raise the resulting children. So "bearing children with" and "having a relationship with" might have very different types of men as an ideal.

You have just described the academic paper "Women's Mating Strategies" by Elizabeth Cashdan, Evolutionary Anthropology 1997.

> If she thinks he might be a shitty father who only contributes the minimum, then she shouldn't marry him or have kids with him.

The law frequently provides protection for people who enter certain contracts, even when they ought to know better. For instance, if I loan money to someone who then goes bankrupt, I am entitled to some of their property. Even if it was a really stupid loan.

In this particular case, women aren't particularly good at determining whether a potential husband will turn out to be a scumbag, so it makes some sense for society to protect them against that possibility. (Actually, men aren't very good at determining whether a potential wife will be a scumbag either, so society should probably protect them, too...)

Or, perhaps, government should simply let them figure it out by themselves. And by the way, loan provisions are not mandated by government but negotiated up front. If you make a non-recourse loan, you won't get access to the borrower's personal assets even if his business goes belly-up.

> And by the way, loan provisions are not mandated by government but negotiated up front. If you make a non-recourse loan, you won't get access to the borrower's personal assets even if his business goes belly-up.

I did not know that. Admittedly, I don't have any examples that work quite as well. Maybe medical malpractice... or is that just a breach of contract?

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