5 ms·

Unluckily, you cannot insure yourself against the immense risk of alimony payments if a divorce should happen.

by q-big 5y ago

xyzelement 5y ago
> Unluckily, you cannot insure yourself against the immense risk of alimony payments if a divorce should happen. Of course you can. You can know thyself and know thy partner and have the maturity to understand what you're getting into, and the ability to commit despite that. EG: I know there's 0% chance that my wife and I will get divorced, not because marriage is so easy but because we're both people who are able to work through difficulties towards a common goal. It requires self-awareness and work.
- noisy_boy 5y ago
  Sure. However, there are plenty of not so straightforward people too who are very well aware of loopholes in our law, society and human psyche and they are happy to exploit them.
- aidenn0 5y ago
  What if you were drafted, served in a war overseas and came back with severe PTSD? For my parents generation that was a real thing that caused a lot of divorces.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    Think of the tens of millions of families who last their dad in ww1 and ww2. Even that is echoing through time, because their missing influence probably impacted their Children’s success and so on.
- toyg 5y ago
  > I know there's 0% chance that my wife and I will get divorced You share this mindset with every divorced guy I know, including myself. Men just don't see it coming.
  - oblio 5y ago
    Men don't see it coming because they don't care. Quite frequently men are in bad relationships that don't affect them much but they generally don't walk away. Women pull the trigger when they can't take it anymore.
    - mensetmanusman 5y ago
      This could be the reasoning of someone with survival bias though. Unfortunately, life can be complicated, e.g. family member went through undiagnosed schizophrenia for many years, one can imagine how that upset the marriage assumptions prior to the mental health issues.
      - oblio 5y ago
        I was talking more about the average situation. I would assume serious mental health issues are the edge case in this scenario.
vmception 5y ago
You can mitigate most of this if you're wealthy already. Basically, one of many things you can do - in any jurisdiction - is move all your assets to your private foundation and simply not pay yourself for the duration of the marriage, including what you personally make while in the marriage if anything. Non-profits can invest indiscriminately in anything so the money can keep growing and supporting almost anything you want. During divorce proceedings you have pretty much nothing, except the history of earnings if any which indeed can be used to compute your alimony payments. But all your accumulation and assets are not in your name, so the alimony won't be consequential compared to the horror stories we've heard of ex-spouses having to check themselves into jail when they ran out of money to pay. Back to this plan, don't forget to load up on debt as a general lifestyle choice, way before the marriage has issues. Personally you should never have positive net worth, and there should also be a line of creditors such that anyone else has to get in line or fuck off. Afterwards you can direct your foundation to pay you a hefty salary. The purpose isn't to screw your spouse over, its to be judgement proof from all kinds of creditors (and maintain your standing in society as a philanthropist). That will include mitigating the folly of silly unlimited liability contracts such as marriage contracts. Simply put, the clauses could be better. Love, finances, much like a lawyer I don't really care about what emotional reasons people associate with marriage and those are always available whether you do 5 minutes of estate planning or not. In my perspective, removing the downsides allows for both spouses to focus on love or whatever they want to do together. Something more commonly associated with marriage, by at least one spouse. "I donated everything to non-profits!" You get to win through many life events here. A state judge will not be able to undermine the federal status of the non-profit. They do have discretion over the pre-nup agreement though. So if you have the money to make a ridiculously unsexy pre-nup agreement, you have the money to make a ridiculously sexy private foundation which gets to exist in subtlety. If you are saving up for a downpayment on a house while your life is slipping away year after year and the whole goal is to leverage up with a spouse on a mortgage before you are an ineligible bachelor/ette, then this game has no applicability to you. There is nothing attractive about that game to me, at any earning level. Discussions about the top 10% or top 5% make no difference to me, because the circumstances are the same: wage workers that barely match the cost of living wherever they earn, slow accumulation, risks (health, employment, life events) that undercut growth simply because it takes too long. Better to just have, there is no profound message applicable because the message is that simple. There are almost too many advantages to just having.

Unluckily, you cannot insure yourself against the immense risk of alimony payments if a divorce should happen.

by q-big 5y ago

Unluckily, you cannot insure yourself against the immense risk of alimony payments if a divorce should happen.

> Unluckily, you cannot insure yourself against the immense risk of alimony payments if a divorce should happen. Of course you can. You can know thyself and know thy partner and have the maturity to understand what you're getting into, and the ability to commit despite that. EG: I know there's 0% chance that my wife and I will get divorced, not because marriage is so easy but because we're both people who are able to work through difficulties towards a common goal. It requires self-awareness and work.

noisy_boy 5y ago
Sure. However, there are plenty of not so straightforward people too who are very well aware of loopholes in our law, society and human psyche and they are happy to exploit them.
aidenn0 5y ago
What if you were drafted, served in a war overseas and came back with severe PTSD? For my parents generation that was a real thing that caused a lot of divorces.
- mensetmanusman 5y ago
  Think of the tens of millions of families who last their dad in ww1 and ww2. Even that is echoing through time, because their missing influence probably impacted their Children’s success and so on.
toyg 5y ago
> I know there's 0% chance that my wife and I will get divorced You share this mindset with every divorced guy I know, including myself. Men just don't see it coming.
- oblio 5y ago
  Men don't see it coming because they don't care. Quite frequently men are in bad relationships that don't affect them much but they generally don't walk away. Women pull the trigger when they can't take it anymore.
  - mensetmanusman 5y ago
    This could be the reasoning of someone with survival bias though. Unfortunately, life can be complicated, e.g. family member went through undiagnosed schizophrenia for many years, one can imagine how that upset the marriage assumptions prior to the mental health issues.
    - oblio 5y ago
      I was talking more about the average situation. I would assume serious mental health issues are the edge case in this scenario.

vmception 5y ago

You can mitigate most of this if you're wealthy already. Basically, one of many things you can do - in any jurisdiction - is move all your assets to your private foundation and simply not pay yourself for the duration of the marriage, including what you personally make while in the marriage if anything. Non-profits can invest indiscriminately in anything so the money can keep growing and supporting almost anything you want. During divorce proceedings you have pretty much nothing, except the history of earnings if any which indeed can be used to compute your alimony payments. But all your accumulation and assets are not in your name, so the alimony won't be consequential compared to the horror stories we've heard of ex-spouses having to check themselves into jail when they ran out of money to pay. Back to this plan, don't forget to load up on debt as a general lifestyle choice, way before the marriage has issues. Personally you should never have positive net worth, and there should also be a line of creditors such that anyone else has to get in line or fuck off. Afterwards you can direct your foundation to pay you a hefty salary. The purpose isn't to screw your spouse over, its to be judgement proof from all kinds of creditors (and maintain your standing in society as a philanthropist). That will include mitigating the folly of silly unlimited liability contracts such as marriage contracts. Simply put, the clauses could be better. Love, finances, much like a lawyer I don't really care about what emotional reasons people associate with marriage and those are always available whether you do 5 minutes of estate planning or not. In my perspective, removing the downsides allows for both spouses to focus on love or whatever they want to do together. Something more commonly associated with marriage, by at least one spouse. "I donated everything to non-profits!" You get to win through many life events here. A state judge will not be able to undermine the federal status of the non-profit. They do have discretion over the pre-nup agreement though. So if you have the money to make a ridiculously unsexy pre-nup agreement, you have the money to make a ridiculously sexy private foundation which gets to exist in subtlety. If you are saving up for a downpayment on a house while your life is slipping away year after year and the whole goal is to leverage up with a spouse on a mortgage before you are an ineligible bachelor/ette, then this game has no applicability to you. There is nothing attractive about that game to me, at any earning level. Discussions about the top 10% or top 5% make no difference to me, because the circumstances are the same: wage workers that barely match the cost of living wherever they earn, slow accumulation, risks (health, employment, life events) that undercut growth simply because it takes too long. Better to just have, there is no profound message applicable because the message is that simple. There are almost too many advantages to just having.