When Susan Harris divorced her husband of five and a half years last
December, she got the apartment, extra closet space and the covers all
to herself.
Her ex? He got $37,440.
That money is being doled out in 48 monthly alimony payments. Or, as it's called in some circles, "manimony."
Over the course of the couple's marriage, Harris, 31, who makes more
than $100,000 working in ad sales in Alameda, California, brought in
more than two-thirds of the household income, while her ex-husband (who
declined to comment for this article) worked toward becoming a
credentialed teacher.
The couple had no children or joint
property other than a rental apartment. When things started getting
rocky in the relationship around year two, Harris was loath to end
things, partially because she was concerned that she'd be obligated to
continue supporting him financially, even though he was employed.
Her concerns were well founded. Legally - under state laws - both women
and men are entitled to alimony if there's a large discrepancy in
spousal income.
However, that doesn't mean men seek alimony.
"Thirty-three percent of higher-earning spouses are women, but fewer
than four percent of alimony payers are women," says Ned Holstein,
president of Fathers & Families, a family-court reform organization
in Boston, citing U.S. Census Bureau data.
Finances of marriage
For most of the history of marriage, money changed hands before the
ceremony, often in the form of dowries. But as divorce started to
become more common in the 1900s, so did post-separation monetary
agreements.
"Traditionally, marriage was a financial
arrangement. Joining hands in marriage meant joining bank accounts, and
bank accounts were largely in the hands of men," says Roderick
Phillips, a professor of history at Carleton University in Ottawa, and
author of "Untying the Knot: A Short History of Divorce."
"The
trend in the 20th century has been to allow women to recover what they
had before the marriage and to compensate them for anything they
sacrificed during the marriage," says Phillips.
The Uniform
Marriage and Divorce Act of 1970 gave men as well as women the right to
ask for alimony. Up until the 1980s, however, there were only a handful
of cases in the U.S. in which a woman was ordered to give money to her
spouse in a divorce case. However, "in recent years there's been a
greater movement towards gender equality," says Phillips.
'I'm a man! I can take care of myself'
Some husbands have settled for increased custody instead of going to the mat for money, says Holstein.
"I hear a lot of men say, 'She earns way more than I do, but I wasn't
going to ask for alimony because I get the kids 40 percent of the time
and I don't want to rock the boat.' Then there are a lot of men who are
just ashamed to ask for it."
Nancy Chemtob, a divorce attorney
and a founding partner of Chemtob Moss Forman & Talbert, a New York
City law firm that focuses on divorce, family and matrimonial law,
agrees. "Men don't brag about it, and women aren't proud of it."
"I think men are chided for not making money and women are not. It's
not even brought up if a woman in court says she is not working. Where
if it is a man, it's brought up, says Chemtob. "The law is equal,
but... the mentality isn't."
Mark Berlin, 45, an office manager
at Office Depot in Chicago, was awarded $250 a month in alimony on top
of $925 a month in child support when he divorced the mother of his two
sons in 2005.
"I didn't really even want the alimony, but she
made more than me and [the court] said that's what she had to pay,"
says Berlin. He puts the payments, which will continue through 2010,
into college savings for his kids.
"I do think that there
shouldn't be discrimination against one sex or the other, says Berlin.
"Still, when I first realized she was going to be paying me, I felt
very embarrassed. I felt like, 'I'm a man! I can take care of myself!'"
Changing times, changing attitudes
Not all women resent paying money to their exes -- and not all men feel
uncomfortable being on the receiving end. As the number of alimony
cases increases, attitudes are gradually beginning to change.
Jeffrey Leving, an Illinois divorce lawyer and author of the book
"Fathers' Rights" attributes a rising trend in women paying spousal
support in part to an increased number of fathers serving as primary
caregivers.
"I also think that there are more men wanting to
function as the sole parent and raise children than ever before," says
Leving. "It's becoming more socially acceptable for men to be primary
parents."
Chemtob says close to one-tenth of her clients are
women who pay alimony to their exes. "When I first started 14 years
ago, that number was zero," she says.
For the last two years
Alexis Martin Neely, a family lawyer and author of the financial
planning guide "Wear Clean Underwear," has paid her ex-husband between
$1,300 and $2,000 a month in alimony -- in addition to child support.
During their six-year marriage, he was a stay-at-home dad. Currently he
is unemployed and has custody of the children half the time.
"I'm grateful to be able to support him being able to spend time with
the kids," says Neely, who is 34 and lives with her two children in
Hermosa Beach, California. "It's just money -- I can always make money.
But I see people embroiled in conflict for years of their life, and
that's something you can't ever get back."
Read it all at CNN.
