Hello. I am reading about marital property in the States:
https://www.nolo.com/legal-encyclopedia/separate-community-property-during-marriage-29921.html, and about how assets are treated and divided in a divorce.
Personally, I think that we should overhaul the system, and treat assets of a married couple as completely seperate and individually owned, unless they specifically designate a particular asset as jointly owned. For example, only the money in a joint account should be considered marital property. And only this money should be equally divided in the event of a divorce. I feel that even though marriage is the merging of two people, we need to recognize that these two people are still seperate individuals and their assets shouldn't be mixed. And this is even more important when we take into account that they might divorce, which is a very common occurrence. I believe that the way we currently treat spousal assets is not good enough, and it simply discourages people from thinking about marriage. I am sure you have heard these sentiments expressed, usually by men but can be by women too. They would be like, I am really hesitant to get married because I could lose half my worth if we divorce.
A related thing. I remember this divorce case, I forget the details such as the individuals' names, but basically, the husband was a very successful business man, and the wife was a stay-at-home mother. The husband met a woman so he initiated divorce proceedings. They were trying to determine how to divvy up the assets, which were quite substantial because the husband made a lot of money. Anyway, I believe that the judge awarded the wife half, because the wife took care of the home front so that the husband wouldn't have to worry about anything and could focus on his career. Apparently the judge thought the woman was an indispensable part of the husband's success. I am not saying the wife didn't contribute, I agree that she did in a real way, however, if you think about it, the husband was the one who earned all that money. The wife didn't work and didn't earn any of it, she merely made it possible for the husband to not have to worry about the domestic sphere. She should get
some money, but not half. Maybe like 1/5th of the money or some such. A good amount but not half of it. We should treat cases like this really carefully, because I believe the way we currently handle things, we are sending out a message to financially successful men that getting married is very risky, and they could lose half of what they own.
And if you mention pre-nuptials, I just want to point out that these have been over-turned by courts before, so they are not a fool-proof way to protect one's assets in a divorce.
Thanks for reading.
This post was edited by JessiWan on Aug 14 2022 03:59pm