Item from the Smart Marriages Archive, reproduced in the Divorce Statistics Collection
Tuesday, November 30, 1999

In resurgence of alimony, new view of women

By Kyle Johnson, Special to The Christian Science Monitor

After two decades of decline, alimony has begun to make a resurgence in
American divorce law, due in part to a renewed focus on the job
sacrifices women often make throughout a marriage and the value of their
traditional role as family caretakers.

Originally conceived as a support system for homemaking spouses unable to
make a living for themselves, alimony had fallen out of favor since the
advent of feminism in the early 1970s.

Indeed, since then women have made great strides toward self-sufficiency.
Yet for women 25 and older, the earning gap has remained nearly 76 cents
on the dollar earned by men, supporting the notion that many women make
sacrifices in their marriage years that significantly reduce their
earning power.

As a result, some courts and state legislatures are rethinking alimony
law. The notion of short-term awards, aimed at nudging divorced
homemakers into the workplace and toward economic independence, is being
tempered by the idea that ex-wives sometimes need long-term support from
former spouses.

"We're moving into a new discussion about [alimony]," says Mary Frances
Lyle, co-chair of the American Bar Association's alimony committee. "At
the peak of the women's movement ... there was a strong attitude of 'You
want equality and independence, you got it baby,' " she says. "But now
we're beginning to see that it's a much more complex issue than that."

The shift has been gradual, slowly and inconsistently filtering into
family-law courts. Even so, it signifies a growing desire to compensate
spouses who make career sacrifices to support a marriage that fails,
regardless of their ability to support themselves at a certain minimum
level.

Renewed focus

Several factors are working to bring renewed focus on alimony in divorce
law, family lawyers say. One is the wage gap. Another is the nationwide
effort to trim welfare rolls. It has prompted a realization that spouses
who don't provide for exes often leave the state holding the tab.

Trial judges have been known to show sensitivity to this issue, says
Steven Fuchs, a Boston lawyer and general manager of the DivorceNet Web
site. "If a woman is going to be destitute, judges will often consider
that in her award even if they don't think she really deserves it," he
says. "They'd rather [put the burden on] the ex than put the woman on the
public [dole]."

But alimony is a fractured area of law, in part because state officials
have been reluctant to take up the issue. Therefore, alimony rules are
often the result of judicial interpretation. That can result in
considerable variation from region to region and even courtroom to
courtroom.

Several state Supreme Court decisions earlier this decade, however, have
laid the groundwork for the new interpretation of alimony's purpose. In
recent months, courts and state officials have added to the momentum with
a handful of decisions.

*Last month, California Gov. Gray Davis (D) signed a bill allowing former
spouses to receive alimony payments longer. The legislation overturned a
law that said alimony payments should continue for only half the length
of a long-term marriage (one that lasted more than 10 years).

*In September, New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman (R) signed a law
formally codifying "limited-duration alimony," a type of alimony for
shorter-term marriages that had been used in case law for some time. And
last year, in a closely watched case, the state Superior Court determined
that a woman who had been married for a relatively short 10 years should
receive permanent alimony.

*In May, an Illinois appellate court gave $4,500 a month to a woman who
had been married 19 years, tripling the $1,500 a month laid out by the
trial judge.

*Earlier this month, Texas voters approved a constitutional amendment
that would give the state more authority to garnish paychecks of exes who
don't pay up.

The Texas vote deals only with the enforcement, not the scope, of the
state's alimony law, which is the stingiest in the country. But it's a
sign that even Texas is coming around, say some activists.

"Finally, law is recognizing that the work women do in the home and
raising children is extremely valuable work for society," says Hannah
Riddering, president of the Austin (Texas) chapter of the National
Organization for Women. "This, at least, is a small step in the right
direction."

Unfair targets?

Perhaps not surprisingly, men's organizations are less enthused about the
new direction the law is taking. Almost exclusively, alimony recipients
are women.

Although the bar association has no exact figures, Ms. Lyle notes that in
20 years of divorce-law practice, she has not handled a single case in
which the man received an award. Nationally, she estimates that the
figure is "easily under 1 percent of all cases."

So Hugh Nations, executive director of the Austin-based Men & Fathers
Resource Center, calls the new Texas law "another arrow in the quiver of
women's advocacy groups directed at fathers."

"I don't think I have ever encountered a case where the mother stays home
to support a child that she did not say she did so at the insistence of
the husband," says Mr. Nations. "It's always the husband's fault that
she's behind the curve in the job market. It never seems to be have been
their personal preference once the marriage ends."

To others, though, the evolving concept of alimony is resulting from a
more nuanced understanding by states and judges of the financial
sacrifices women make through marriage.

Indeed, they are now considering the question of how much a woman "gives
up" by being the primary parent, says University of Texas family law
professor Jack Sampson, who wrote Texas' alimony statute.

"You have one party relying in the deal in a manner that's clearly to
their detriment when the deal ends," says Mr. Sampson. "And whether it's
a written agreement between the couple, or they talk about it - or even
not - that deal amounts to a contract. So you have to have some sort of
fair compensation based on that standard."

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