My own story is, in my view, an egregious one. I married in my 40's to a woman also in her 40's. She had a house and I had a job. We were married only 10 years though the marriage was, for all intents and purposes, over after only 5 years. During the last 5 years of the marriage she made my life miserable at best and sometimes horrible.
-She filed for divorce after years of threats, waiting for the 10-year anniversary to do so (that is the benchmark here for a "long-term" marriage)
-I owed her EXACTLY nothing at the time of the divorce. In fact, it is easy to argue that SHE owed ME since I left her in a palpably better financial position than when we began living together. It can also NOT be argued that I owed her for any "intangible" things she might have done for me during the marriage. I did everything for myself from laundry to shopping.
-When we separated I had the same job as when we first met. She was unemployed, as she was when we first started living together.
-Her cost of living is, in NO way, any greater today as a result of our having lived together.
Despite these facts I am ordered to pay her lifetime alimony, for what? And this alimony has kept me from paying down my enormous credit card debt, debt that grew as large as it is because she never worked while we were together.
###
