There should be no such thing as alimony payments, spousal support or maintenance upon a divorce

1. You say the examples I gave of forcing people to give to charity are totally unlike alimony. First off, you use the word "leech" off successful. I think that is disrespectful to those who give or receive charity. Secondly, you describe it as doing something for the "greater good" and in your initial argument you say alimony is for "social stability and fairness." That sounds a lot like "greater good" to me so in that respect they are the same. Your words, not mine. Alimony is also a government enforced mandate, which is also what my examples were. The one difference you could possibly make is that the spouse receiving the support "earned" it during the marriage and the people in the examples did not. I will give you that, but I would argue (at least in some cases) they did nothing more than the other partner to "earn" anything. If one worked during the marriage then they paid for the other's housing, food, clothing etc. and if one took care of the house, kids then they did those errands for the other. Quid pro quo and it ends when the marriage ends 2. You say it is my duty to argue that there should be no spousal support whatsoever. I suppose it is, but you have to realize I was just throwing up the original argument and it wasn't exactly refined. I don't care for the formality of this site or following a bunch of rules of debate. I reserve the right to clarify my original statement. Just like you reserve the right to say there should be alimony in only some cases 3. You say unemployed childless spouses receiving alimony are not the majority of cases. Maybe we can at least agree that in some cases there should be no alimony. 4. You say it would cost 40K a year to pay for all the non-working duties the unemployed spouse does and only the wealthy could afford it. Even if this is so, then the wealthy are getting a raw deal because their alimony payments are often much more than 40K a year so it would have been cheaper for them to pay for a nanny, housekeeper, etc. 5. You say the one spouse is owed something for the time spent at home instead of advancing their career. You are failing to realize that the spouse did receive housing, food, clothing during the marriage without having to work a "real job." Secondly, this a choose they made in the relationship and it should not be done contingent on alimony payments in the future. What is to stop them from having worked too and then they can share in the "home duties." I am sure there are plenty of examples of both people working and both doing equal shares of "home duties" and yet one receive alimony payments after the divorce simply because they were the poor ones in the marriage. How do you explain those cases? And I am sure this happens in a large percentage of cases. You know as well as I do that the government factors in how much somebody "makes" in determining the alimony payments and not just how much they "did" in the marriage. 6. Lastly, you talk about "when people enter into a marriage, they should be ready to support each other...regardless if differences arise some time IN THE MARRIAGE." That's just it. The marriage is no more. It is over. They should not have to support each other anymore. One is not indebted to another. That is my point.