‘My fears are that they can take you back to court, and I don’t have the money for an attorney.’
"The so-called party of ‘family values’ has just contributed to erosion of the institution of marriage in Florida,”
Said the divorced woman…
Also note that many of these women were in favour of the bill until it was signed and they found out it was retroactive.
“They’re hurting the wrong people” - people who voted for leopard eating people’s faces party
This same article was posted on another magazine, so I’m reposting my comments from that thread here in response to comments left by @Retix @cassetti and @amberprince
Please know that the Venn diagram between me and DeSantis is razor thin, and the only thing (I think) we have in common is that we are carbon-based life forms. I also see some common sense items in what was described in the article, but I have my larger misgivings, which I’ll explain much further below.
Why alimony is important and necessary
Here’s why alimony is important for the rest of an ex-spouse’s life. I want to be clear that I believe a spouse of any gender should have access to alimony, but the most traditional situation is a woman who forfeited having a career outside of the home to be a mother and homemaker, while a man furthered his career for - let’s just say - a long enough time that once the divorce occurs, it’s too late for the woman to reasonably start a career and expect to rise to the same level the man is at in his career at time of divorce. Let’s use an arbitrary number like 20 years for my example. Let’s assume these two people met and married no later than 25 years old for the sake of my example, as well. Alimony is not relevant for couples married for very short periods (less than 5 years), nor is it relevant if both spouses worked full-time jobs.
So in my example here, both people are about 40-45 years old. Retirement age is going to vary by industry, but roughly let’s say 65 years old. By this point, the man has paid into either a 401k, pension, a Roth IRA, or some other retirement financial tool for 20+ years as well as a federal retirement program, usually Social Security. One of the stipulations of paying into these financial tools is that you have to have a job in which you’re submitting W-2/I-9 documentation. A stipulation of receiving the money you paid into Social Security in specific, is that you have to make enough dollar-amount SS contributions that amount to a little more than 10 years of working a W-2/I-9 kind of job/career. And to boot, the amount of SS you get paid after retiring is based on your highest earning 35 years of your lifetime of work.
So when a woman has skipped college, not worked outside the home, hasn’t gained job skills, etc. etc. for 20 years, she is now coming back to the job market with zero tools and equipment to get into a career (though obviously could enter the workforce through a paycheck-to-paycheck poverty wages kind of job), has no Social Security credits for a retirement that is just about as far away for her as it is for her ex-spouse, and has no savings or other financial resources because she was a homemaker and didn’t earn money as her compensation for her labor. She is also now going into new situations at a time in life in which we have all lost neuroplasticity and may find it difficult to learn new things or go back to college. And we should also be realistic about the subtle/legal ways in which older people are discriminated against in the hiring process.
This is why alimony exists. It helps to make up for the opportunity-cost in an adult’s older career years and for lack of retirement security. When the members of the First Wives Association and other ex-spouses seek lifetime alimony, it’s because they either will never have access to their own Social Security benefits, or will have access to extremely scant benefits whenever they do retire.
Something that negatively affects them and they will change just enough to make it not affect them.
So I don’t really know how to feel about this.
Permanent alimony seems silly to me. If I’m married for 10 years and get a divorce, why should I have to pay alimony for the next 40+ years?
I’m not opposed to alimony though. My in-laws just got divorced. They were married for like 20 years and during that time my father in law owned a business and wanted his wife to stay at home and take care of the house, kids etc. Now that they are divorced she has no career or equity and is in her 50s so starting one from nothing is a huge challenge. So there are fringe cases out there where it makes sense.
I don’t know. I don’t like DeSantis so as a reaction I want to be like “this is a dumb thing to do” but I just don’t know.
According to the article, permanent alimony is granted only if the receiver agrees to give up other assets in exchange. So it’s more of a trade.
So in effect this change means that trade will no longer be possible. At least not to the same degree. Everyone splits everything equitably and goes their separate way, plus some alimony but not lifetime. Seems reasonable to me.
At what point are you imagining this 60 year old woman with no work experience is going to be able to support herself?
Well at 60, she and her husband have been saving for their retirement for 40 years already, so she’ll use that to retire early. Plus she’ll have at least half of all other assets too. Probably more if she’s disabled as in your example and unable to work at all.
Or do you believe that the husband should be unable to retire to find her lifestyle in perpetuity?
Yeah I don’t know how I’d feel about this one personally. But I don’t really have much experience with this one personally - I guess I’d have to get to know some people who have alimonies to get a better understanding from both sides before I could form a solid opinion.
But it’s healthy to consider the policy and not simply the politician endorsing the bill. I hate how our society has devolved into “team blue” vs “team red” mentality. I hate both extremes equally and prefer to vote based on policy.
One policy I have is that I personally will never vote for a politician twice, unless I believe they have proven to me over the past few years they care about me and my needs as an average citizen. So far I never had the opportunity to vote for a politician twice - they always let me down lol.
I hate how our society has devolved into “team blue” vs “team red” mentality. I hate both extremes equally and prefer to vote based on policy.
A broken clock being right twice a day still means you shouldn’t be using the clock to tell time lol.
Even when it does happen to be right… You should be taking it with a huuuuuuge… Huuuuuuuuuuge grain of salt and probably look for another clock lol.
It wasn’t right through logic. It was right because of luck and entropy lol.
Florida Woman suspects Jaguars might fancy faces.
Did jaguars eat the leopards?
I’m sure that some of these women are from Jacksonville, so
Yes. With Ron the fascist DeSantis deliberately alienating Trump supporters I think it’s safe to say that his arm of the party has shifted from a leopards eating faces party to a jaguars eating leopards and faces party.
