Women Paying Alimony

Yet some feel it should be. But like many aspects of divorce court, it’s not about what the parties feel or even think is fair. It’s up to the judge. “When you leave it up to judicial discretion, you get what you get. There is not a black letter law you can count on. In California, for instance, if you are under a 10-year marriage, on the outside, you are looking at paying spousal support for at most, half the length of the marriage. When you have a law like that, that’s the deal. You can’t appeal it. Everybody knows it and expects it. You can count on that,” Rachman said.   

But there continues to be protest from some of the female population, especially in those cases where women are forced to pay spousal support to a deadbeat husband. In fact, some litigators find that their female clients had no idea what was ahead when they chose to support their husbands financially and emotionally through most of the marriage out of a sense of obligation and kindness. The idea that they would asked to continue to do so after the dissolution never occurred to them.   

“I think most women never give this another thought. Most are shocked to find they could have to pay spousal support,” Sember said. “There's always someone taking advantage of every system, so why should this one be any different? But I don't think though that there are many men who are taking low paying jobs for years with a plan to eventually get a divorce and get alimony. I think there are more men who are simply thrilled to find out they could get alimony and then paint themselves as house-husbands or primary child caretakers in order to make it clear they are not just deadbeats who don't earn a lot of money.”    

Either way, the court often times just doesn’t care. “These women have allowed their husbands to sponge off them for how many years? They really created their own monster and now they want to complain about it,” Gold-Bikin said. “They should have seen it coming.”  


Lenore Skomal is author of nine books and columnist of an award-winning weekly column in the Erie, Pa., Times-News, she also teaches college journalism in Pennsylvania.