3/7/00
Marriage, Bubonic Plague, And Infected Warts
If You Have A Choice, Go With The Warts
Fred
Reed
If I could offer a young man one
piece of sage advice, it would be this:
Don't get married.
Don't do it. Come the divorce, as come
it probably will, the courts will systematically shear you of your
children, your house, and huge amounts of your income for twenty
years. Don't do it. It isn't worth it. Nothing is.
My saying this usually brings, from
women, cries that I'm an extremist or woman-hater. No. The problem is
not women, but the courts. Men can behave every bit as reprehensibly
as women, though they go about it differently. But the judicial
system, which is politicized to the gills, utterly favors women over
men in divorce cases, without remorse, decency, or concern for
children.
Should you doubt this, read, before you
pop the most foolish of questions, From Courtship to Courthouse
by the divorce lawyer Jed Abraham.*
Writes Abraham, "If
you're like most men, you're married, or you hope to marry some day.
You think you deserve to live happily ever after, but if things don't
work out that way, you'll get a civilized divorce and move on. You'll
stay pals with your ex, and you'll see your kids as often as you want.
"You have no idea
what you're getting into."
And you don't. Not the faintest
freaking clue.
A few facts from Abraham:
"The odds are 50%
that your marriage will end in divorce. The odds are 70% that your
divorce will be filed by your wife. The odds are 80% that your wife
will get custody of your children-plus child support, alimony, and/or
a hefty chunk of your property."
That is how it is.
Yes, I know: You don't think this
applies to you. Cup Cake loves you. She would never behave in such a
way. Think again. You have no conception of the hatred that divorce
engenders. Men are callous; women are mean. When a family breaks up,
when a life dreamed of disappears in flames and emotions go limbic,
women are not the kinder sex, and certainly not the more rational. And
Cup Cake will have the absolute upper hand, with the full power of the
state to help her express her dissatisfaction with you.
Abraham: "If
your wages are not withheld and you fail to pay your child support,
the State will garnish your pay, slap liens on your property,
intercept your tax refunds, report you to credit agencies, discontinue
your driver's license, suspend your professional and business permits,
hold you in contempt of court, put your face on a wanted poster, throw
you in jail, and deny you food stamps. But if your ex doesn't spend
that very same support on the children, the State will do. . .
nothing."
It gets worse. There is, for example,
"imputed income." This means that your child support will be
based not on what your children need, not on what you earn, but on
what the court decides you could earn.
Don't do it.
If you love Cup Cake, live with her. Be
kind to her. Be loyal to her. She may be as nice as you think she is:
Many women are. Buy her roses. Just don't marry her, or have children
with her. If the laws were even-handed, marriage would be an admirable
institution. The laws aren't equal.
But it's the kids she'll use, should
things get nasty, to tear your guts out. If you're sure that Cup Cake
won't do this, you're crazy. True, she may not. Not all women do, or
not to the same degree. But you won't know until it's too late. And
the courts will do anything she wants.
Abraham: "Your
ex will warm to calling all the shots. She may cancel your visitation
now and then. If she's truly mean-spirited, she'll go much further.
Under the cover of her court-appointed role as sole custodian, she'll
systematically sever your relationship with the children. She'll
badmouth you to them. She'll schedule their extracurricular activities
during your visitation time. For good measure, she may accuse you of
domestic violence and child abuse."
Think "joint custody" is the
answer? The courts won't enforce it. What are you going to do-sue
Mommy? The kids will hate you for it. Do you believe in pre-nups? The
courts ignore them. Read Abraham. It's all there.
Then, says Abraham, there's the killer:
"More efficiently, your ex may simply move
with the children to a distant community, with the law's
acquiescence."
Kids are the crunch, guys. They hurt.
And she will know it, and use it. The courts will help her. At bottom,
the position of the courts is that the children are her property, like
furniture. Judges don't care about you at all.
Ever drive away from what used to be
your home, with your daughter of four streaking across the parking
lot, yelling, "Daddy! Daddy! Please come back!"-and
you can't?
Ever have your little girl of four say,
"Daddy, can I get my birthday present early?"
"Why, Pumpkin?"
"Well. . . after the divorce we
might move, and I won't see you again."
That's what you are in for, guys. Don't
do it. You'll be suicidally depressed, miss your kids to the point of
desperation, be almost frantic-and the courts will make sure you can
do nothing about it. The ex will probably enjoy it.
That's the reality. Don't believe it?
Talk to men who have been there.
Why do women do these things? Not
because they're evil. Cup Cake is probably a perfectly decent woman in
her dealing with the rest of the earth. She'll do it because she hates
you, which is the normal outcome of a divorce. She'll do it because
she can. She's furious because the marriage didn't work, which will be
entirely your fault.
And the law gives her every incentive:
She will get the house, the kids, the child support-and she knows she
will. If women knew they had an even chance of not getting custody, of
having to pay child support, the divorce rate would drop like a prom
dress and joint custody would suddenly mean joint custody. Women love
their children as much as men do.
But that's not how it is. The courts
encourage divorce, and they rape men. Get used to it.
Abraham: "The
odds are it doesn't pay for you to marry and have kids."
That's a fact, guys. Think about it.
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