JONATHAN NAWN
Daily Reporter Staff Writer
The man comfortable as a stay-at-home dad obviously has come to terms with his shifting role in the institution of marriage – but that same man must take careful stock of his financial situation should his modern marriage end in divorce. Yes, the concept of alimony, or spousal support as it’s widely referred to in the legal community, is slowly but surely changing.
“The concept of alimony was established to benefit the financially disadvantaged party, which had historically been women, but times are changing,” said Robert Mues, divorce attorney with the Dayton firm Holzfaster, Cecil, McKnight & Mues and author of “Divorce in Ohio.”
Though men have had the right to ask for alimony for more than 30 years via the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act of 1970, male alimony cases – or “manimony” as it’s sometimes cheekily referred to – didn’t start trickling through the courts until the 1980s. The past five years, however, have seen divorce lawyers nationwide pushing their male clients with incomes highly disparate from their wives to seek those payments. Some clients push back.
“I have had a number of male clients who should have received spousal support who absolutely just refused to take it and refused to let me ask for it,” said Andrew Grossman of Grossman Law Offices in Columbus. “The notion of not taking it out of pride, even if you’re entitled to it – I think pride is overrated. I think there are guys out there who just want to be macho.”
Mues added that men often feel they are to blame for their own lack of income.
“Not being willing to accept money from their divorced wife to help support themselves, I think that’s based on the typical role that males should be strong and should be the primary providers,” said Mues.
Due to the rise in marriages where the primary earner is a female (in 2005, wives outearned husbands in 33 percent of all families, up from 28 percent a decade earlier, according to the Wall Street Journal), the financial strain of divorce may be softening the American male ego. The U.S. Census Bureau reports that the percentage of alimony recipients who are male rose to 3.6 percent during the five years ending in 2006, up from 2.4 percent in the previous five-year period.
“If you have a mid- to long-term marriage and a women who substantially out earns a man, every time that I think it’s appropriate, I advise (men) to pursue (spousal support),” said Grossman. “In the Columbus area, you’ve got Abercrombie, The Limited, these companies have a lot of highly-compensated women executives and in most cases I’ve been involved with, the man is underearning her.”
Because currently there is no set formula to calculate alimony, frequency and amount of payments ultimately are decided by the presiding judge during divorce cases. Usual factors include the ability of each party to pay, their ages, their health, retirement and health insurance benefits, education, employment history and potential, income, and the length of the marriage.
“What it boils down to is how long they’ve been married and what the disparity of income is. Those are the two factors the court wants to know and probably the two that weigh the heaviest in the court’s mind,” said Grossman.
The disparity between male alimony earned and male alimony paid out is possibly reflected in the widely cited statistic first promulgated by CNN that 33 percent of higher-earning spouses are women, but fewer than four percent of alimony payers are women – figures that placed side-by-side are essentially misleading, according to Grossman.
“What it doesn’t tell you is the inverse of that statistic. I wonder what is the percentage of women who don’t get alimony even when their husbands outearn them,” said Grossman, stressing that alimony decisions are too case-specific for that statistic to signify what it purports to.
If there exists any discrimination in the Central Ohio courts against men who ask for alimony, neither Mues nor Grossman has yet witnessed it.
“People may think that the court system is slanted against men receiving alimony, but that’s not been my experience at all,” said Mues.
Grossman said that in Franklin County the courts are recognized to be fair and gender-neutral in awarding alimony.
“With the judges we have on the bench now, many were Franklin county practitioners who did domestic relations so they have a lot of experience in that arena,” said Grossman. “There’s less of that ingrained stereotype that men go work and earn and women stay home with the kids.”
Copyright 2008 The Daily Reportera href=”http://www.sourcenews.com/news/today” rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank”
The post Women earning more, which means more men are eligible for alimony appeared first on Holzfaster, Cecil, McKnight & Mues, LPA.