AN ATTORNEY’S LEGAL & STATISTICAL REMARKS
I’m a California attorney. There are several facts that I think are highly relevant here:
Divorce laws well-intentioned
Divorce laws are not intended to harm men. Instead, they are intended to protect the party who sacrificed earning potential to (presumably) provide services to the family, (i.e., cooking, cleaning) during the life of the marriage. That isn’t to say these laws are fair. But they are well-intentioned.
Occasionally, women are victimized by divorce laws. I know of several instances where the husband was trying to start a rock band or an acting career. In such a situation, the law forces the woman to pay the man alimony.
Married men more likely to commit adultery
Married men are slightly more likely to commit adultery than their wives (according to most statistical sources). This isn’t to say women aren’t to blame for adultery in such cases-the man is typically committing adultery with a single woman, who must share blame.
4 DIVORCE RULES THAT DISCRIMINATE AGAINST MEN
Child Custody
1) The woman nearly always gets the children. This is plainly discrimination. However, it is nowhere mandated by law-it’s an unwritten rule. It is a product of biased judges who are typically elderly and liberal, and for those reasons tend to see women as inherently more virtuous than men.
Child Support for Children born from adultery
2) If the woman has a child by a man who is not her husband, her husband must pay her child support for the baby, so long as she can keep the child’s paternity hidden from the husband for a year. This is perhaps the most outrageous law of which I am aware. Many states other than California have a version of this law.
No assurance that child support is spent on children
3) The law aggressively pursues men who do not pay child support, but provides no real assurance that the support is actually used for the benefit of the children.
Married Women’s Special Presumption
4) Women married before 1972 (I think I have the date right) may keep gifts given by their husbands following a divorce, but the same is not true for men. This is explicitly discriminatory and most lawyers agree that it would not survive constitutional scrutiny. But the law has yet to be challenged successfully. It is called the “Married Women’s Special Presumption.” This law is only operative in California.
