rule #1 say it with me now: Pre-nuptual Agreement
I tell all of my younger male friends this, and to learn from a real person what the downside of not having one is… as I have slid down to that long financial nightmare of chapter-something-or-other, I am really preaching this to keep guys from ruination…
rule#2 Don’t let her stay home. Seems in a lot of states and surely mine… if she is a stay-at-home with or without kids, she will get alimony. And, yeah, there is no such thing as maintainence. It’s alimony, and you are paying it as if you owe her something. Maybe in ye olden days when a woman migh have no way of getting a job, it was important. Now? No. The hard part, and what drive my female friends crazy [several of whom are divorced] Is because of my earning ability to allow her to stay home with the children, which was her demand, I now have to pay alimony for the same amount of time as the marriage lasted. MEANWHILE if she had worked, there would likely be no alimony.
How does that work? The chica who stays home and reads romance novels while the kids are at school, gets a free pass, while her sisters busting their tails get nothing?
In the end the laws apply only to those who step up to the plate, and act responsibly. Those who don’t, and who the laws are supposed to target, get passed. Male and female. I know guys who hit the door and never looked back, to the ruin of their children, and I know women [one is my ex] who use their college education and career experience… to work minimum wage jobs, since their ex has to pay it all anyway. I have a sort of grim smile that when the alimony is gone, and the last kid is 18, I won’t pay anything anymore… and she will be 50 trying to re-start the career she had 20 years before. Some hard lessons will be learned then…
