[notch656c]

I honestly don't know which is worse though. The 1930s fear and taboo or the 2020 divorce court take you to the cleaners, TRO issued and banned from seeing your kids and your guns taken away and then tossed in jail because you lost your job and the judge says you still owe support. I think I'd actually take the 1930s and I say that as someone who really dislikes those taboos and social pressures you mention.

[ocdtrekkie]

So the experience I've seen is quite different: Family courts today are actually really focused on joint custody, to the extent that I guarantee you a lot of people have joint custody who probably shouldn't. If someone has a TRO and is banned from seeing their kids, there's a good chance a court has a really strong case to believe that person is violent and abusive.

And I think a lot of the hostility that does come from divorce starts with the belief it shouldn't happen or "isn't fair". If I accept that my wife has the right to divorce me if I'm a bad partner, if she does, the first thing I have to acknowledge is that I failed as a husband at meeting her needs (or perhaps that we are incompatible in a way that I never could do so). That would be absolutely crushing, but I wouldn't blame her for it, and if I blame myself, I am probably not going to end up communicating in that procedure in a way the court would feel I am not safe to share custody with.

Accepting that both parties have the right to exit, and that a relationship is a process of continual consent changes the entire dynamic.

Also: Child support, or even alimony, is a recognition that in a marriage, the income may be produced by a single party, even if the overall roles and responsibilities were divided equally. If someone is a stay-at-home-partner, they may not be bringing in the cash income, but they are still 50% of the effort of operating that family unit as they tend to take on more responsibilities such as cooking and cleaning and child rearing which all need to be done by someone. When a marriage ends, the low-income partner cannot necessarily immediately shift into self-sufficient career mode, and obviously the child should be seeing the necessary financial support they would have, so the income of the two parents needs to be compared with where the child spends most of their time (and hence, incurs the most expenses).

[frognumber]

Or she got bored of you, fell out of love, and found someone else to bang. Divorces happen for a variety of reasons. If you failed, that's fine. What if you didn't fail, but she did?

Child support is not bad in theory. It's bad in practice, because divorce is an adversarial process with lawyers, rather than social workers, and designed to inflame conflict. The whole divorce industry is corrupt and rancid.

As a footnote: Expenses with joint custody tend to be pretty equal. If you have a child 3 nights a week, and your spouse has them 4 nights, do you think it makes a real difference to expenses? However, child support in some jurisdictions and income brackets will be about 1/3 of your income. The parent with four nights will have double the income.

That's not designed to support kids. You should consider what that's designed for.

[LorenPechtel]

TROs and sexual abuse allegations can be used as a weapon to get concessions from the other person, or simply to hurt them. They are not evaluated adequately in either direction--plenty are granted without evidence, plenty more aren't granted when warranted. The whole situation is a mess that I don't think should be handled by judges in the first place.

I don't mind alimony per se, but we use a radically wrong standard. It should not be the standard to which they are accustomed, but where they likely would have been had they not taken the years out of the labor force.

[notch656c]

David letterman had a TRO because a woman claimed he was harassing her with code words over the television on his show. [0] The judge granted it "because she filled the form out properly."

This varies wildly by jurisdiction, but the burden of proof can be pretty slim and the judges in some jurisdiction have been on the record saying they grant them out of fear if something goes wrong when they haven't that they'll be held responsible.

[0] http://www.ejfi.org/PDF/Nestler_Letterman_TRO.pdf

>Also: Child support, or even alimony, is a recognition that in a marriage, the income may be produced by a single party, even if the overall roles and responsibilities were divided equally. If someone is a stay-at-home-partner, they may not be bringing in the cash income, but they are still 50% of the effort of operating that family unit as they tend to take on more responsibilities such as cooking and cleaning and child rearing which all need to be done by someone. When a marriage ends, the low-income partner cannot necessarily immediately shift into self-sufficient career mode, and obviously the child should be seeing the necessary financial support they would have, so the income of the two parents needs to be compared with where the child spends most of their time (and hence, incurs the most expenses).

This is an interesting monologue but we all know the reasoning by child support. I'm merely pointing out it's a real specter. When I'm married if I lose my job there's no court process and if I have to take a shitty one and spend way less money on the kid then we will adapt; but after a divorce you have an "imputed income" which is what the judge expects you could make. The judge also expects you're spending 20% of that imputed income towards the kid even though if when you were married it could be just 5% and the kid was fine. If I have to take up trucking and the judge says I really could be an engineer and I'm slacking then I could end up in jail. Granted most people making an effort probably aren't going to end up in jail but merely the fact you have potential debtor's prison hanging over your head at all times is a very real concern even in the event it is justified.

To point out the absurdity of child support debtor's prison as currently run, see the story of the guy arrested because he was held hostage in Iraq while working the contract job he needed to work to pay his child support... [1]. The reasoning? He did not mail the support while the captors were pointing a gun to his head. IMO any system where you can be jailed because you didn't make payments because you were taken hostage while trying to earn support for your children is just utterly fucked.

[1] https://greensboro.com/ex-hostage-jailed-in-child-support-ca...