Reply to Is alimony ever awarded to men?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]According to government data, men pay 99 percent of all alimony dollars paid in the US. [/quote]

I’m willing to bet that data is at least 10-15 years old and includes a lot of marriages that ended 20 years before that.

I think if you looked at alimony awarded in 2022, a much higher percentage would be paid by women.  [/quote]

Two reasons the proportion is remaining lopsided:
1. Men feel ashamed to ask for alimony.
2. Women push back very strongly when a man asks for alimony, even if she makes a lot more than him - in effect women shame men out of asking for it.
[/quote]

Pfft no way. Both parties in divorces tend to become jerks and if a guy can hurt his ex financially with alimony, most wouldn't let their concepts of manhood stop them. [/quote]

It’s in this story.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmajohnson/2014/11/20/why-do-so-few-men-get-alimony/?sh=2000fdc054b9

Of the 400,000 people in the United States receiving post-divorce spousal maintenance, just 3 percent were men, according to Census figures. Yet 40 percent of households are headed by female breadwinners -- suggesting that  hundreds of thousands of men are eligible for alimony, yet don't receive it.

The reason? Die-hard gender roles, a bitter fight from breadwinning wives and macho pride, say family attorneys. And in some parts of the country, judges are flat-out sexist.

"Gender equality is a relatively new concept in the span of history, and old stereotypes die hard," says San Francisco Bay area divorce attorney Mark Ressa. "A successful man is considered a breadwinning man, and asking for alimony is considered emasculating."

This is a typical attitude held by men of all generations, say Ressa and Lee Rosen, a Raleigh, N.C. based divorce lawyer and author of Divorcing Smartly: The End of a Marriage Isn't the End of the World.  Both lawyers report that very few men walk into their offices with the intent of asking for alimony, even when their situations are clearly eligible for spousal support. Meanwhile, female breadwinners never pay alimony without a contentious battle. "Every guy in that situation has to go through a fight, while (breadwinning) guys go into the divorce accepting they have to pay," says Rosen. Then, facing humiliation, stress and expense of that fight, they are further disincentivized from pursuing spousal support. "Men are essentially shamed into not receiving alimony," Ressa says.[/quote]

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