What is Just Compensation for a "Life Lost"?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Thank you for posting the anecdote above. I just don't think it is realistic to expect a spouse to be responsible for compensating someone for "opportunity loss" of that magnitude.

When you get married, you agree to assume some responsibilty for you spouse's welfare -- not compensating him or her for a theoretical career. In the case above, Annie is probably entitled to a few years of alimony, making it possible for her to get a job, and maintain a reasonable standard of living. It's unrealistic to expect to be compensated for theoretical seven-figure salary career.

And remember, she is automatically entitled to half of their assets. If he was making millions, then she presumably will be walking away with seven figures herself. Boo friggin hoo.

It is, unfortunately so, not realistic for the poor to be properly compensated in a divorce.

It is also, unfortunately for most of us in the middle-class to merely-wealthy class, also unrealistic be compensated for a certain lifestyle in which we had lived for many years.

For someone in George and Annie's position, that is extremely and truly wealthy, it is completely realistic to be compensated generously for many, many years. The courts see it as a totally equitable, completely warranted, fair redistribution of income - or haven't you read the proposals for increasing taxes on the wealthiest 1%? It is viewed as the same thing -- poor spouse deserves at least 39-50% of very, very rich ex-spouse's income.

[Anonymous]

Annie is not getting a job at 6- years of age. Just ask your currently unemployed, pre-senior citizen friends how their job search is going - and they have been working consistently without any large career gaps.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Annie is not getting a job at 6- years of age. Just ask your currently unemployed, pre-senior citizen friends how their job search is going - and they have been working consistently without any large career gaps.

I meant at 60 years of age.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What do you all think. I do think my DH owes me more for all I have given up.

Bullshit. Who forced you to marry him?

+1 - Since when does somebody owe you for the poor choices YOU made?

Exactly. You weren't complaining when he was paying for everything.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The story of George and Annie (totally fictional).

George is a Vienna boy who attends Virginia Tech, where he earns his BS, MS and PhD in ChE. Annie is a San Francisco girl who earns in BA in Philosophy at Yale. They both meet at Harvard, while she is earning her JD and he is earning his MBA.

After Harvard, she clerks on the Fourth Circuit and he begins his career for Mobil. She goes on to join him in the DC area a year later, in 1981, where she is clerking on the Supreme Court. They get married the summer after her clerkship, and she begins work that fall for Skadden in the practice area of Mergers and Acquisitions.

They spend the next nine years enjoying life as a high-earning, no-children, career-focused, fun-loving couple. Annie's and George's career are going very well, and they travel all over the world as vacations permit. In her ninth year at the law firm now, Annie has been assured through reviews that she is on the track to make partner in M&A in the next year or two at most. Then George comes home one day, in 1990, to tell Annie that he has been offered a two-year job posting in Abu Dhabi which will surely lead to the executive ranks in Development.

Annie considers this, talks to friends, family, and colleagues, and is reassured that a two-year break, after which they will return to DC, should not postpone her partnership opportunities too much -- besides it is a good time to start the family they had always planned.

Two years in the UAE turns into three which is then unexpectedly (but why derail George's momentum now?) followed by three years in Nigeria, and now the family has two children - a boy and a girl - both under the age of six. It is now 1996, and George turns down another promotion opportunity in Papua New Guinea to finally return to DC. On the eve of their return, though, another company - Exxon - with whom George has worked, offers him a deputy vice-president position in Development, which pays much more, but is in Houston. George and Annie decide to move to Houston, where two children soon become three.

Three years later, in 1999, Exxon and Mobil merge, and George is recalled to Virginia, where his star continues to rise. Annie takes care of the logistics of their move, and as she thinks about where the family should live and where the children will go to school, she contemplates a return to work. Full-time, partnership at Skadden is not eventually out of the question as they want her back, but will be difficult to attain in the near-future as she has not done any M&A work - or indeed any legal work - for the past nine years. Annie settles the family in McLean, gets the two older children into Sidwell, and stays home with the two-year old as she works on hiring a nanny and finding a job.

In 2000, Annie finds in-house work at a relatively new corporation, Capital One, which conveniently is located near their home. However, that first year back at work is not easy, one nanny leaves and then another, and their little girl is having constant infections, ear, sinuses, pneumonia, which require constant doctors appointments. George, obviously, cannot or does not want to take the time off of work for these, and in any case he is constantly traveling internationally.

Annie finds it increasingly stressful to maintain her legal schedule responsibly at a company that is growing by leaps and bounds while having to pick up the older children from afterschool programs at 6:00 p.m. (when the nanny is making dinner) and take time from her schedule for school meetings, doctor's appointments. However, with the help of an accommodating employer and later a part time schedule, she manages to balance everything for the next year-and-a-half.

In late 2001 George is sent to London, and the family follows. More relocation, more finding schools, more transfers in an increasingly tense world. Every time Annie is left to contemplate and coordinate the logistics, help execute the seamless transfer and adjust the children to a great new life in their next stop.

It is now 2014, the three children are off and well at Stanford and Virginia Tech as they launch their own careers, and the youngest daughter is about to start at Yale. George is now Vice President at another global oil company and extremely well-situated and compensated.

In truth, Annie and George have been growing apart for some time now, and she is ready to return to the States and assume to semblance of a more-normal life closer to the children. George needs to remain abroad for his career, and they amicably decide to divorce at this point after a long, and relatively good marriage.

George any Annie have been married 33 years, since 1981. She has been out of legal practice, except for her brief, year-and-a-half long stint at Capital One, back in 2000-2001, for almost twenty-four years.

Annie is now a 60-year old, unemployed attorney. George is now a senior vice president of an international oil company earning upwards of $5 million/year. If she takes the next 33 years to try to build up her career, as George took to build up his, she will be almost 90 before she reaches her full earning potential, and that is clearly not going to happen at her age for many reasons.

I hope that this completely fabricated example helps to illustrate why a spouse is often compensated for a lifetime career loss.

Would it make a difference if Annie were still completely and deeply in love with, and devoted to, George; and believed, from his words and actions that he felt the same way about her?

In July 2014, as they prepared to embark on a long-awaited vacation to the Seychelles to celebrate their son John's graduation from Stanford and their thirty-two years of marriage, George informed Annie that although he "would always love her, he was no longer in love with her". Several months later he would inform Annie that he wanted a divorce and planned to move in with Melinda, a woman sixteen years his junior and herself a senior executive at the same British petroleum company (as well as a widowed mother of two earning $2 million/year).

[Anonymous]

16:36...

No. It wouldn't matter.... would it matter if John was graduating from Montgomery College?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:16:36...

No. It wouldn't matter.... would it matter if John was graduating from Montgomery College?

Either way, Stanford or Montgomery College, infidelity or no infidelity, Annie is going to college very generous alimony of at least $ 1 million a year, plus a very favorable distribution of martial assets tilted in her favor. I agree with another poster that there is no way, at age 60, that she will ever earn or establish a career earning even a quarter of her earning potential. Either way, good luck with your divorce Annie, you go girl (or grandma)!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:16:36...

No. It wouldn't matter.... would it matter if John was graduating from Montgomery College?

Either way, Stanford or Montgomery College, infidelity or no infidelity, Annie is going to college very generous alimony of at least $ 1 million a year, plus a very favorable distribution of martial assets tilted in her favor. I agree with another poster that there is no way, at age 60, that she will ever earn or establish a career earning even a quarter of her earning potential. Either way, good luck with your divorce Annie, you go girl (or grandma)!

I meant "collect", you got me verbally distracted with your Montgomery College post.

[Anonymous]

Oops, I meant "marital" assets, martial are the arts she will need to perfect to get physically back at that cheating, good-for-nothing George!

[Anonymous]

People who work long hours with SAHM spouses are insane. They really are.

Do not work long hours (50+) for money unless you truly find the work personally fulfilling. It's NOT worth it and you WILL regret it in the end when your money is taken from you anyway.

You wanna talk about "a life lost"? How about those surgeons who spend the prime of their lives studying, followed by spending their middle age working long stressful hours, not seeing their kids for days at a time, only to get taken to the cleaners by their SAHM who thinks she "sacrificed" her life for him. BS, he is the one who made the sacrifices. But, he is the bad guy, right?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:People who work long hours with SAHM spouses are insane. They really are.

Do not work long hours (50+) for money unless you truly find the work personally fulfilling. It's NOT worth it and you WILL regret it in the end when your money is taken from you anyway.

You wanna talk about "a life lost"? How about those surgeons who spend the prime of their lives studying, followed by spending their middle age working long stressful hours, not seeing their kids for days at a time, only to get taken to the cleaners by their SAHM who thinks she "sacrificed" her life for him. BS, he is the one who made the sacrifices. But, he is the bad guy, right?

In the case of my mother, who was a very senior executive at the end of her career, in a field which took her all over the world, this was not the case. My mother loved all of her children, but she figuratively lived for her work and her professional accomplishments. Professional ambition was the oxygen she breathed, and she was lucky to marry a man in that era (the 1970s) who was willing to travel the world with her, support her professional pursuits, and stay home to raise us kids. For my mother, at least, the long hours at work, the weeks away on travel, the time away from us her children, were totally worth it because they were done in pursuit of her goals and not simply to support the family. There are many professionally ambitious people for whom the time away from home and family is time well spent, as it is time necessary to fulfill a professional ambition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:People who work long hours with SAHM spouses are insane. They really are.

Do not work long hours (50+) for money unless you truly find the work personally fulfilling. It's NOT worth it and you WILL regret it in the end when your money is taken from you anyway.

You wanna talk about "a life lost"? How about those surgeons who spend the prime of their lives studying, followed by spending their middle age working long stressful hours, not seeing their kids for days at a time, only to get taken to the cleaners by their SAHM who thinks she "sacrificed" her life for him. BS, he is the one who made the sacrifices. But, he is the bad guy, right?

In the case of my mother, who was a very senior executive at the end of her career, in a field which took her all over the world, this was not the case. My mother loved all of her children, but she figuratively lived for her work and her professional accomplishments. Professional ambition was the oxygen she breathed, and she was lucky to marry a man in that era (the 1970s) who was willing to travel the world with her, support her professional pursuits, and stay home to raise us kids. For my mother, at least, the long hours at work, the weeks away on travel, the time away from us her children, were totally worth it because they were done in pursuit of her goals and not simply to support the family. There are many professionally ambitious people for whom the time away from home and family is time well spent, as it is time necessary to fulfill a professional ambition.

It sounds like your mother found the work to be personally fulfilling. That's fine. She's the target of my warning.

Just don't work long hours at a job you hate for money/status. I know that's common sense, but a lot of "professional" types do it anyway, and they often regret it.

IMO, the ideal marriage is two people maintaining a healthy work/life balance and a modest lifestyle.

[Anonymous]

Sorry -- meant to say that she's NOT the target of my warning.

[Anonymous]

It is very simple. Get a job.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It is very simple. Get a job.

Reading comprehension fail.