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Oh for hell's sake. McKenzie Bezos helped Jeff when he was establishing Amazon and she was in the steady job earning the money while he chased his dream. Then the marriage ended because HE, not she, fell for the next door slapper* and blew up his marriage (apparently they are finally getting married because she just threw a huge hen party recently).
I think in that case she's entitled to every penny of the divorce settlement. I'm not familiar with Melinda Gates' case but again that seems to be Bill not being able to keep it in his pants. The men in these examples are the cheating liars, not the women. Pick a different scare story than "oh no, if you wreck your marriage to the woman who raised your kids and was there in the early years before you became rich and famous because you chased a blow-up Barbie doll, you might even have to pay a fair share of alimony! clearly women are all only gold diggers!".
*This is what she considered appropriate to wear to a presidential inauguration. But go ahead, tell me how poor Jeff was taken advantage of by his rapacious wife.
I don’t see why a woman should have any right to a man’s earnings after termination of the marriage. Being a good companion and a good parent is easy. Making money is hard. If one parent stayed at home while the other worked, if there’s a divorce, the idle parent should owe compensation for the time they twiddled their thumbs and watched teletubbies on the other’s dime: they’ve had their fun, it’s their turn to work now.
I smell a stuffy prudishness in your condemnation these men: are you familiar with the modern concept of no-fault divorce? No one gives a shit who fucked who, and even less how the paramour dressed.
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 lack of subjectivity, 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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