For those of you who think that alimony reform is just a men's issue brought on by a bunch of whining, alimony paying spouses, please be aware that the National Organization of Women [NOW] "Statement of Purpose" endorsed the cause for alimony reform as far back as 1966. In it, they stated:
"We, men and women who hereby constitute ourselves as the National Organization for Women, believe that the time has come for a new movement toward true equality for all women in America, and toward a fully equal partnership of the sexes, as part of the world-wide revolution of human rights now taking place within and beyond our national borders.....
.....WE REJECT the current assumptions that a man must carry the sole burden of supporting himself, his wife, and family, and that a woman is automatically entitled to lifelong support by a man upon her marriage, or that marriage, home and family are primarily woman's world and responsibility -- hers, to dominate -- his to support. We believe that a true partnership between the sexes demands a different concept of marriage, an equitable sharing of the responsibilities of home and children and of the economic burdens of their support. We believe that proper recognition should be given to the economic and social value of homemaking and child-care. To these ends, we will seek to open a reexamination of laws and mores governing marriage and divorce, for we believe that the current state of `half-equity" between the sexes discriminates against both men and women, and is the cause of much unnecessary hostility between the sexes."
As you can see, even though NOW agrees with the position that lifetime alimony is unwarranted, the judges, lawyers and the rest of the legal industry are determined to degrade women by granting awards of alimony that make the statement that women are unable to care for themselves. These rulings are declaring that women are not the equal of men. The principles that NOW has fought for over 50 years are ignored by the courts, and by NOW itself.
You have to ask yourself why, with this statement of purpose displayed so boldly on the NOW site, they aren't fighting with more zeal to demand that lifetime alimony be abolished as they did in seeking equality in the first place. Could it be that as long as women are allowed to collect alimony welfare through some sort of imagined "entitlement" for being married that they are justified in violating their advocacy of equality.
Maybe they should change their statement of purpose from that of "seeking true equality for all women......exercising all the privileges and responsibilities thereof in truly equal partnership with men" to a more realistic one that includes the comment from George Orwell where he pointed out that: "all people are created equal, only some people are created more equal than others."
To compound things, when you look at the realities of the situation in the light of a profit motive for the legal industry, adversarial divorces are simply a way of transferring the bulk of the family assets to the legal industry in the form of exorbitant fees, costs and a myriad of other court mandated requirements such as mediation, counseling, expert testimony, etc. in order to obtain a divorce.
Is this justice or just a way to fund a multi-billion dollar industry that builds it's success on the destruction of spouses and families in the name of equity and under color of law?
Where will it all end?? Project the statistics and the answer will be self-evident. The end effect of this apparent hypocrisy is the contribution to the destruction of the institution of marriage and families in this country [Read about the Marriage Strike]. Added to that is the creation of a spousal class of alimony welfare recipients who are no longer useful and self-sufficient members of society.
###
