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In the case of McKenzie Bezos, she was functionally his business partner at the founding of Amazon and it simply hadn't been structured that way because they were married. This seems like a reasonable thing for the courts to decide in the event of divorce.
More to your point, being a good wife and mother is not, actually, easy. It isn't a super g-loaded task but housewives should be recognized for their valuable role and marital property in the event of a divorce seems fair. Neither Gates nor Bezos are poor after their divorces(which, again, were easily avoidable by those men).
She put a few stamps on early orders, that must entitle her to half the future earnings of the man who created and worked all his life as CEO of that company. I think not.
We live in a time where every wife feels like an “equal-value partner” in their husband’s business, and the laws we made agree with them. But they are not.
I understand it's always the man's fault and he always has to pay. If he cheats, well he got what he deserved. If she cheats, he failed to nurture a woman's love, he didn't treat her right, and you wouldn't want to slut shame a woman anyway, and besides, she 'contributed' to the marriage, so here's the bill again.
At every level of society, at every age, women get more than they put in. Starting at university, where they have been 56/44 for decades despite working far less, through marriage, divorce, and pensions, where they live longer after having contributed less. And the more we hand over to them, the more oppressed they feel.
That's very much not what she was granted in the divorce. She received a minor portion of their marital assets. Bezos kept the vast majority.
I do not own a house. My wife and I own a house. If somehow we had to divide our assets, I can't rightfully say it is all mine, get bent woman.
That is only a convention. Society has retained features of ancestral marriage that benefit women and jettisoned the rest. They come from a time where housewives would bring far more economic benefit into the marriage (a dowry, tending the chickens etc) .
What if I said: “get bent woman, it’s my money, you did not work for it. You never had full ownership of my assets, only the usufruct, and that limited right lapsed with the divorce.” Obviously the courts would disagree. But their opinion is not a law of nature.
Women are only so eager to get married, and then divorced, (and men reluctant) because our laws give them huge financial benefits for doing so. We have structured society so that the ideal, most high-paying career for a woman, is marrying a rich man. And then we wonder why they are not in STEM and contributing to society as much as men.
I sense a divorced man in our presence.
On advice of counsel I invoke my privilege against summary opinion dismissal and respectfully decline to answer your inquiry. Presumably, the personal experience of being a divorcee would make one bitter and lacking in objectivity, too emotionally invested in the subject, and therefore wrong. But is this really the case?
To take another example, let’s say I gave my opinion on parenting, or education, in favour of homeschooling, or against authoritarian parenting. Someone will come and ask me if I have children, again as an implied criticism, to dismiss the opinion of the childless man. But unlike the divorcee, in that case, it is the lack of personal experience, the lack of emotional involvement and objectivity, that makes him wrong. Opposite causes, same effect.
So it is not epistemic hygiene and concern for the truth that makes these opinions worth dismissing. What then? Status. It is lower status to be divorced and childless. So the dismissal based on personal circumstances pretends to be a method of searching for the truth, but is really about the status games we all play, pushing some people down, getting to a higher rank.
I don’t mean this as a harsh criticism of you, as if I’m responding to an offense: ‘you just made an enemy for life, buddy.’. For all I know, your comment comes from a place of 100% pure empathy, goodness and the search for truth, justice and the american way, you seem like a friendly guy. It’s just a thought, idle speculation.
I was just trying to lighten the mood. I certainly know many men who are divorced, some more than once, and some of them would be much, much wealthier now had they not been (or indeed, had they never married.) I realize my comment's humor, if it had any, would be at your expense, and for that I apologize.
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It is not ‘always the man’s fault’ to believe that, in these two specific cases, it’s the fault of the man. Indeed, the rule of thumb most people would use to blame Jeff and Bill is that adultery is a major fault committed by the party who engages in it.
Life isn’t entirely fair, but ‘Jeff Bezos having to pay out to his early business partner because he couldn’t keep his pants on’ is not a great example. We live in a world where early google employees got it made even if they were cooks, ‘successful startups give huge payouts to early employees, even if they’re not worth it’ is just how our society works, and this is a delayed example because marriage necessarily changes property arrangements.
Your preferred religious morality rules are not applied fairly. Are you in a position to punish women financially for adultery like you think cheating men deserve? No. Because the system officially runs on very different principles (egalitarian & sexually permissive) that aren’t applied fairly either.
Partly because guys like you refuse to apply the same censure to women as you do to men, women get to pick which sort of marriage they’re in at any given time for maximal advantage.
Yes. Obviously it's much rarer because house husbands are still very uncommon, but tens of thousands of men receive alimony. A relatively small fraction of the total, but again that's because there is less reason to award alimony in the case a husband who continues to work throughout a marriage, especially when, as is true in most cases, they out-earn their wife.
You're a progressive, Harold. Why would you want to punish people for adultery?
I think alimony is a completely outdated concept. There is no reason to award it ever. The solution to the problem of the law encouraging women to mooch off men (and alimony is only a small part of that) is not to make it easier for men to mooch off women.
It's not about punishing people, it's about an implied obligation. If (for instance) a woman interrupts or gives up a career while married, whatever you think about who has is 'hardest', that is very obviously done on the understanding that this loss in current and future earnings is fine because the man will continue to earn. If he then pulls the rug out from under her because he's had a mid-life crisis and wants to run off with the secretary, he should have to make good his obligations. If you don't like those obligations, don't get married. If we could bring up the money for alimony from the ether, that would be great because I don't care about 'punishing' the adulterer, but obviously we can't.
Implied obligation, uh-hu. So if the housewife cheats, she should be financially left in the cold, right? She did not fulfill her implied obligation of fidelity. Or if she wants to leave with the pool-boy, same, she should be financially punished for rug-pulling the contract like her husband is if he cancels.
That is not obvious at all. It’s a pro-moocher perspective.
To put gender out of it, let’s say my gay lover was a doctor or a banker, and I lived idly at his mansion, drove his porsche, and occasionally walked his dog. It would be ludicrous for me to pretend that my lazy ass ‘gave up my earnings’ on the understanding that his income will support me in the future. If the relationship ended, far from demanding he hand over his assets , I would thank him for letting me use his stuff while we were together, and be on my way. It is not some great sacrifice to not work, it is a privilege.
People don’t like them, and they are not getting married. The obligations are not fixed in stone. If we made them better and fairer, people may get married more, and hate each other less.
Fine, but this thread literally started about the case of two married couples.
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