The marriage buyout
Subtitle: the troubled trajectory of U.S. alimony law
By: Cynthia Lee Starnes
Series: Families, law, and society series; Families, law, and society series
Publisher: New York University Press
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 225
ISBN-13: 9780814708248
Subjects: Alimony
Description: From divorce court to popular culture, "alimony" is a dirty word. Unpopular and rarely ordered, alimony awards are frequently inconsistent and unpredictable. The institution itself is often viewed as a historical relic that harkens back to a gendered past in which women lacked the economic independence to free themselves from their husbands. In short, critics of alimony claim it has no place in contemporary visions of marriage. But as Cynthia Lee Starnes argues in The Marriage Buyout, alimony is often the only practical tool for making sure that the law of divorce treats primary caregivers as equal partners in marriage rather than as suckers. Her solution is to radically revise the concept as a marriage buyout. Starne's buyouts draw on a partnership model of marriage that reinforces communal norms, providing a gender-neutral alternative to alimony that assumes equality in spousal contribution, responsibility, and right. Her quantification formulae support new default rules that make buyouts more certain and predictable than their current alimony counterparts. Looking beyond alimony, Starnes outlines a new vision of marriages with children, describing a co-parenting partnership between committed couples, and the conceptual basis for income sharing between divorced parents of minor children. Under her buyout model, the focus of alimony is on gain rather than loss and equality rather than power: a spouse with disparately low earnings isn't a sucker or a victim dependent on a former spouse, but rather an equal stakeholder in a marriage who is entitled at divorce to share any gains the marriage produced. -- from dust jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (pages 187-216) and index.
Table of contents: title: Who cares about alimony?; title: Alimony's heritage : the helpless, the blameless, and the clean-break losers; title: Alimony and mother myths; title: The contemporary state of alimony; title: Alimony in context : a comparative perspective; title: Reasons matter : alimony, intuition, and the remarriage-termination rule; title: The search for a contemporary rationale; title: A marital partnership model: alimony as buyout; title: Beyond alimony : lovers, parents, and partners; title: Conclusion.