Manning Up or Wimping Out: Men Don’t Exist to Serve Women’s Desires
ZeitTrash, when you say your mom got “some of his social security” that’s not true. Social security is based on income; if they were married over 10 years, she may have qualified for benefits based on your fathers earnings if she was over 62, divorced for at least two years, single and not eligible for an equal or higher amount of money based on her own work or that of another husband to whom she was married at least 10 years.
As to the rest? That was normal in the 70′s; the difference today would be that equity in the house is likely to be split with the party keeping the house owing the other party their half. Alimony isn’t generally awarded and spousal maintenance is typically short-term. The ones getting spousal maintenances are usually stay-at-home wives of executives of a certain age and income bracket. The objective is to keep them in the style to which they were accustomed during marriage, assuming they haven’t worked and wouldn’t be able to go back to school and reasonably achieve a similar lifestyle on their own.
Lest we forget, even in the early 1900s, back when women and children were considered property, a divorced woman owned nothing, not even her clothing, not even if she had brought it to the marriage, rarely got custody of the children (see above, father’s property) and if she did, it was because they were under 8 and they reverted to the father’s custody at age 8. The woman became the object of her family’s charity.
