Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Oh Wait....

You mean women don't get to make money that isn't counted when its divorce time? You mean men's money is always at stake to be taken, nearly in its entirety regardless of his actions or the duration of the marriage!?!?!?! An outrage! Its like saying women aren't privileged member of society when it comes to divorce. SICKENING!

Amanda Platell: 'Britain's Divorce Laws Need to be Changed to Stop Ladies Leeching Off of Men'
April 7th, 2010 by Robert Franklin, Esq.

Philippa Vaughan, 66, has no children, lives in a four-bedroom £1million house in fashionable Hammersmith, West London, and inherited £770,000 from her parents.

Not only that, she's

a working woman (with a job as an expert in Islamic and Indian art).

In short, she's in no way hurting financially, but the British divorce laws and the judges who interpret them, believe she is. That's why, after 25 years of separation from her ex, a judge just ordered him to pay her an additional £215,000 out of his estate. And, as this article points out, it's not as if Vaughan contributed anything to her ex-hubby's estate (Daily Mail, 4/3/10). He saved almost all of it after they split up. So what's the rationale for the payout ordered by the court? It's hard to see.

And writer Amanda Platell isn't happy about it, not a bit. She rightly points out that continuing to treat women as if they were children, incapable of caring for themselves and requiring ongoing infusions of male-earned money is an insult to the concept of women's equality.

It's particularly so in Vaughan's case. She supports herself and contributed essentially nothing to her ex's estate. Of course it's satisfying for her to "get one over her ex," but the larger picture is one of female privilege at the expense of males. When feminists complain that there aren't equal numbers of male and female elected officials, maybe they should look at the other side of the coin, the one on which they demand privileged status for women in many walks of life. I don't think you can have both. In the last analysis, I don't think a society that looks at women as uniquely needy, uniquely frail, uniquely weak, uniquely in need of protection, will simultaneously see them as equal. I don't think it works that way.

As if to underscore the point, the judge in Vaughan's case

said it was 'plainly wrong' to think she could adjust to life after her ex-husband's maintenance payments were cancelled last year.

Really? I wonder if he would say the same if the sexes were reversed. After all, this woman is well-educated and holds a good job, lives in a posh house and has about $1 million in the bank. Somehow, she required his "maintenance" and now without it, she can't "adjust to life." Who knew life could be so hard?

More important than the shakiness of the judge's reasoning though, are his assumptions. How pathetic a figure must he perceive Vaughan to be! Somehow, given all that she has, according to his logic, she just can't make it on her own. There are billions of people in this world who'd love to give it a try. It's that mindset that holds women to be overmatched by any and all circumstances that will consign them to secondary status as surely as any law ever could.

And it's that mindset that's got Amanda Platell spitting mad, and rightly so. Changing Britain's divorce laws isn't the whole answer of course, but it would be a start. Ex-spouses should only get part of the marital estate to which they contributed, and that includes non-monetary contributions. They should only get "maintenance" in cases of actual need, and when the need runs out, so should the maintenance.

It's past time to start treating divorcing couples like adults, whether they act that way or not.

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