4 ms·

The 1 in 100 is what keeps my wife busy with family law. The odds of ending up marrying someone vs having a healthy relationship are 2 very different things.

by salmo 4y ago

The 1 in 100 is what keeps my wife busy with family law. The odds of ending up marrying someone vs having a healthy relationship are 2 very different things. My wife and I dated through undergrad, broke up at "get married or break up." And ended coming back together as adults with more life and relationship experience. Based on plans, we never should have been back in the same city. And when we started hanging out again, neither expected a relationship, just a friendship still being sick of each others' sh. But we had both grown up. We're 24 years into our relationship now. I think it's going well. That's all purely anecdotal, though. I don't think real math could be done with this. Success isn't measurable. People often split due to $ or tragedy. People stick it out, miserable the entire time. It walks into Aristotle's eudaimonia. You can't know until it's over. Even then, quantifying quality is folly.

Dracophoenix 4y ago
I'm guessing your wife is a divorce attorney? If so, knowing what she knows, what's stopping her dropping out of the marriage and taking half your stuff? Even in a perfect marriage, there's always the incentive.
- tomerv 4y ago
  The incentive to do what exactly? Break up a good marriage to get half of the common assets (minus many many expenses)? How is that better in any way?
  - Dracophoenix 4y ago
    A "good marriage" isn't guaranteed to be a desirable one past the wedding day. I am in no way suggesting GP's marriage is a ticking time bomb, but I've read enough stories on Reddit and elsewhere to know there's no such thing as a guaranteed marriage even if you do everything right. My expectation is that GP's or his spouse might possess insight. People who's marriages I thought would go on till death (Bezos's, Gates's, Carmack's, and most recently Tom Brady's) can have the scales tipped into the direction of "leave for reason X and take what you can from him (and sometimes her) on the way out", whether out of vindictiveness or perceived entitlement, even if the money wasn't the primary cause or objective.
    - tomerv 4y ago
      I think that's a common misunderstanding about who owns what in a marriage. I'll quote Matt Levine on this: One thing that I find a little weird about the Bezos divorce is that there are a lot of claims that it will make MacKenzie Bezos “the world’s richest woman.” I suppose there is a technical sense in which that is right, but it assumes not only that she will have a right to half of Jeff Bezos’s assets in divorce, but also that she has no such right in marriage. That strikes me as a strange way to think about marriage, and about the “community property” laws that might give her half the assets in divorce. (Surely those laws imply that she is in a sense a joint owner now?) I would have thought the more straightforward analysis is that she is the world’s richest woman now, because she is a member of a married couple that has more money than any other single person or married couple on the planet, but I guess that is not how the scorekeeping works. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-10/bezos-divorce-won-t-be-weird-for-amazon https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-10/bezos-...
      - Dracophoenix 4y ago
        This concept of marital property is speculative, if not fictional, unless both Jeff and Mackenzie made explicit agreements to co-own the shares during their marriage. Prior to their divorce, if Jeff wanted to dump all his Amazon stock, I doubt he needed MacKenzie's permission to do it. If he were deposed by the SEC over alleged claims of market manipulation with Amazon stock, Mackenzie would not be the one held liable. While she may have been able to influence his purchases/selloffs as one half of the world's now-formerly richest couple, she never had ownership of the stock as a legally-recognized property right in itself (and the liabilities the may come with such ownership). She now has such a right (although I would argue that she shouldn't) as a divorcée.
        dragonwriter 4y ago
        > I would argue this concept of marital property is a fiction Property is a social construct; marital property no more or less than any other, and likewise no more or less a fiction. > . Prior to their divorce, if Jeff wanted to dump all his Amazon stock, I doubt he needed MacKenzie's permission to do it. Yes, marriage is exactly like a general partnership in that, absent explicit agreement or special legal treatment of particular property, any partner can dispose of property of the partnership. Also, like a general partnership in that the property legally ascribed to the partnership rather than partners individually is divided among the partners as personal property at dissolution.
- salmo 4y ago
  No, she does general practice. That includes family law, but not dedicated. It would be an equitable portion of our collective stuff, not 1/2 of mine. There is no “yours” when you’re married. That’s a big part of what marriage means. Even pre-modern and across many cultures, marriage has been viewed as a contract. Money (or lack thereof) is one of the primary motivators in her experience. A lot of “rich people” get divorces when they’re in debt up to their eyeballs and the consequences hit. We’re not struggling, not wealthy, and are pretty equally valued. Also, there’s more than stuff. The burden of children, a household, and even our own lives would be much greater solo. We’re a pretty great support system for each other. There is no perfect marriage. Part of my point. I think mine’s great. We’ll see when we’re dead or divorced.

by salmo 4y ago

Dracophoenix 4y ago

I'm guessing your wife is a divorce attorney? If so, knowing what she knows, what's stopping her dropping out of the marriage and taking half your stuff? Even in a perfect marriage, there's always the incentive.

tomerv 4y ago
The incentive to do what exactly? Break up a good marriage to get half of the common assets (minus many many expenses)? How is that better in any way?
- Dracophoenix 4y ago
  A "good marriage" isn't guaranteed to be a desirable one past the wedding day. I am in no way suggesting GP's marriage is a ticking time bomb, but I've read enough stories on Reddit and elsewhere to know there's no such thing as a guaranteed marriage even if you do everything right. My expectation is that GP's or his spouse might possess insight. People who's marriages I thought would go on till death (Bezos's, Gates's, Carmack's, and most recently Tom Brady's) can have the scales tipped into the direction of "leave for reason X and take what you can from him (and sometimes her) on the way out", whether out of vindictiveness or perceived entitlement, even if the money wasn't the primary cause or objective.
  - tomerv 4y ago
    I think that's a common misunderstanding about who owns what in a marriage. I'll quote Matt Levine on this: One thing that I find a little weird about the Bezos divorce is that there are a lot of claims that it will make MacKenzie Bezos “the world’s richest woman.” I suppose there is a technical sense in which that is right, but it assumes not only that she will have a right to half of Jeff Bezos’s assets in divorce, but also that she has no such right in marriage. That strikes me as a strange way to think about marriage, and about the “community property” laws that might give her half the assets in divorce. (Surely those laws imply that she is in a sense a joint owner now?) I would have thought the more straightforward analysis is that she is the world’s richest woman now, because she is a member of a married couple that has more money than any other single person or married couple on the planet, but I guess that is not how the scorekeeping works. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-10/bezos-divorce-won-t-be-weird-for-amazon https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-01-10/bezos-...
    - Dracophoenix 4y ago
      This concept of marital property is speculative, if not fictional, unless both Jeff and Mackenzie made explicit agreements to co-own the shares during their marriage. Prior to their divorce, if Jeff wanted to dump all his Amazon stock, I doubt he needed MacKenzie's permission to do it. If he were deposed by the SEC over alleged claims of market manipulation with Amazon stock, Mackenzie would not be the one held liable. While she may have been able to influence his purchases/selloffs as one half of the world's now-formerly richest couple, she never had ownership of the stock as a legally-recognized property right in itself (and the liabilities the may come with such ownership). She now has such a right (although I would argue that she shouldn't) as a divorcée.
      - dragonwriter 4y ago
        > I would argue this concept of marital property is a fiction Property is a social construct; marital property no more or less than any other, and likewise no more or less a fiction. > . Prior to their divorce, if Jeff wanted to dump all his Amazon stock, I doubt he needed MacKenzie's permission to do it. Yes, marriage is exactly like a general partnership in that, absent explicit agreement or special legal treatment of particular property, any partner can dispose of property of the partnership. Also, like a general partnership in that the property legally ascribed to the partnership rather than partners individually is divided among the partners as personal property at dissolution.
salmo 4y ago
No, she does general practice. That includes family law, but not dedicated. It would be an equitable portion of our collective stuff, not 1/2 of mine. There is no “yours” when you’re married. That’s a big part of what marriage means. Even pre-modern and across many cultures, marriage has been viewed as a contract. Money (or lack thereof) is one of the primary motivators in her experience. A lot of “rich people” get divorces when they’re in debt up to their eyeballs and the consequences hit. We’re not struggling, not wealthy, and are pretty equally valued. Also, there’s more than stuff. The burden of children, a household, and even our own lives would be much greater solo. We’re a pretty great support system for each other. There is no perfect marriage. Part of my point. I think mine’s great. We’ll see when we’re dead or divorced.