>Why should a spouse with no earning power be given a free pass on having obligations? Completely agreed, and yet having just gone through this, I assure you t

>Why should a spouse with no earning power be given a free pass on having obligations? Completely agreed, and yet having just gone through this, I assure you the State has no problem telling you just that. At least in my state, the view is that each party should be put into a situation as much like what they had during the marriage as possible. Unfortunately the way the courts have interpreted this is that a non-working spouse is deemed to have been the childcare provider, therefore they have more rights to the children plus should be compensated with the same quality of life as before. This of course means that the working spouse cannot possibly ever have the life they had previously, because they will now be forking over nearly all of their income (seriously- I know of a local case where their child support obligation was more than their actual income) to that non-working party. Likewise, it's silly for the court to think things will ever be "the same" - unless there are sizable assets, of course the non-working spouse will have to go back to work! So yes, I would like to agree with your statement that "Claiming that being married disqualifies someone from the workforce is a relic of an era that is long past" but unfortunately this is still the case in some (many? most? I don't know) states. Even nominally progressive ones.