"Real-life" examples of alimony paid/received?
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Anonymous
Most women work. |
Anonymous
| ExDH and I negotiated ourselves, and did it less by cash amount and more by expenses. His idea, not mine. So he paid the rent on the 2 bedroom apartment I moved to with the kids, plus utilities and cable/internet. Like that. |
Anonymous
We do not own a $1M house. More like $450k. |
Anonymous
| Alimony is ridiculous. Get a job. The gravy train ends once you decided to end the marriage. |
Anonymous
And what if he is the one who decides to end the marriage? |
Anonymous
Alimony compensates the gravy train if free labor men receive during marriage. Get a prenup if that hurts your feelings. |
Anonymous
Those women sound like idiots. My house is worth 350k, my car is 12 years old, AND I have a career of my own. |
Anonymous
Different poster here, but it seems the gravy train still ends. |
Anonymous
Men tend to be independent & self-sufficient, so no alimony needed. |
Anonymous
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12 year marriage.
No alimony. Received half of his business valuation (which I did a lot to build up from scratch). It was either business value or alimony - I couldn't double dip. Child support for 2 less is than 1700/mo. There was no retirement to split. I bought out one real estate asset and tripled its value (architect here). Other real estate asset to be settled when kids are off to college. No mortgage, no debts. |
Anonymous
That's actually not true. Courts try to be gender blind. There are dependent men who are awarded alimony (I know of a few). |
Anonymous
Alimony is recognition for the 'work' of domestic life. While there are varying levels of the productiveness of that work, it is still work. Consider the case of the navy wife and their children. She is incapable of maintaining a career because her husband is shipped from port to port every few years. The career aspirations of a naval officer rests very much on the ability of the spouse to maintain the domestic sphere and promote his social life. Or a journalist posted for a foreign country with spouse and kids in tow. That journalist's family life would be non-existant if not for the spouse. There are many high achieving professionals who wouldn't have a domestic life if not for the spouse at home. Modern courts do recognize the education attainments of the non-working spouse and increasingly factor that into the duration of alimony. So if the non-working spouse is college educated and still young, alimony would only be a few years as the expectation is that she can return to work with some training. But if the non-working spouse is in her late 50s and had outdated skills but raised a passel of his children, maintained home, took charge of the domestic responsibilities for several decades so he had the freedom to travel and make partner, the it can be reasonably argued that she will have a hard time finding outside work and frankly her efforts on the domestic front is 'work' that helped propel him professionally. She is entitled to a share of his success because she helped get him there. That's the gray world of alimony. |
Anonymous
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Married 12 years, together 22 total. He got caught cheating with men, so I had some leverage. No kids. We used a mediator and negotiated this between ourselves, so I have no idea what a judge would have instituted.
At the time we negotiated this, he made 200k, I made 100k. Our salaries have always been 2:1, but he has more growth and bonus potential than I do. Rather than deciding on a set amount, which would diminish in value over time due to inflation, we came up with a formula: 20% of the difference in our salaries (his minus mine), divided by 12, I receive monthly. Never to dip below a floor of $1400/month. Currently it's around 1600. Plus, I receive 20% of any bonuses he gets. We recalculate this formula every March 1 using the previous year's W-2s. This will be paid for 10 years or until someone moves in with me and contributes to my living expenses. In that case, the alimony will pause, to start up again if that person moves out and we're still within the 10 years. It would also end if I receive greater than 200k in gifts from my parents (like an inheritance). I own a life insurance policy on my ex for 250k, which he pays the monthly premium for. |
Anonymous
| Virginia, married 18 years. At the time of divorce he was making around $130k and I was making around $90k. Split assets 50/50. Shared custody. We worked it out ourselves. No alimony or child support, but we set up a joint account for the kids expenses with each of us contributing a pro rated share of our income. I got him to cover insurance and cell phones as well as an agreement that we’d jointly fund college (using the joint, pro rated account). My Virginia child support calculator had estimated payments of a few hundred dollars. |
Anonymous
No My sister's husband traveled 6 days a week during the marriage. He did nothing at all. He talked her into giving up her career so his could take off. Her mistake. He wanted four kids, which they had. He had many affairs one day she was done. She deserves every single penny putting up with that creep. |