Abolish "Lifetime" Alimony: Update On The Marriage Strike

"You just need to be a flea against injustice. Enough committed fleas biting strategically can make even the biggest dog uncomfortable and transform even the biggest nation." --Marian Wright Edelman

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A marriage strike is the avoidance of marriage, especially by men. The term is often used by masculists to suggest that many men avoid (or should avoid) marriage out of a conscious fear of financial devastation in the event of divorce.

Advocates of the marriage strike hold that through the combination of laws permitting no-fault divorce and prevailing conditions in divorce courts that are substantially more likely to favor the wife over the husband in disputes over child custody, visitation rights, ownership of the family residence and other shared property, child support, and alimony, it is possible for a woman to divorce her husband unilaterally while simultaneously depriving him of the right to see his offspring and financially crippling him. They argue that since the divorce rate is high, and since women are more likely than men to seek no-fault divorce, scenarios like the above are a likely outcome of marriage, and that many men, fearing such an outcome, choose not to marry.

There have been numerous studies showing that a range of 60 to 93 percent of no-fault divorces in the United States were initiated by women, usually against a man who works a blue-collar job, for grounds cited as "emotional unfulfillment."

Proponents of the marriage strike advise that men should consider cohabitation as a safer alternative to marriage, or that in the event of marriage, men should protect themselves through prenuptial agreements. The current best means for protection still is to avoid both marriage and cohabitation.

From the various articles I have been reading, it appears that the marriage strike is gaining strength and the destruction of the family structure in our society is happening at an increasing rate. Not only that, but there is evidence that same situation is occurring in other countries.

The basis of this statement is the Census Bureaus recent publication of the fact that in this country, the number of households with unmarried couples outnumber the ones with married couples.

All this is occurring largely because of government intervention in family life, invasion of our Right to Privacy and the subsequent laws regulating divorce and welfare.

While outwardly mouthing platitudes of promoting family values and grand-sounding slogans about the government promotion of marriage on one hand, on the other hand they facilitate the ease with which couples can get a divorce by enabling “no fault’ laws and insuring the financial suicide and enslavement of one of the spouses.

Not only does one spouse receive a generous portion of all the others assets, house, pensions, etc. in the divorce but is granted liberal benefits associated with lifetime alimony welfare payments which stifles the incentive for that spouse to become a useful and self-support member of society.

Below are some of these articles that lend credence to this phenomena: