If the wife is not working, then it can appear to the guy that he is losing half his salary and savings. It is acceptable now to live with another person without being married, so co-habitation is not imposed by the govt, but one of individual choice and responsibility. If a person wants to get married, they should be married by their church. Other than that, a marriage certificate is just a govt document, enforceable by the government. In the event of a divorce, it will be up to the judge to determine how to split the assets. The reluctance to get married is driven by the high rates of divorce. Its a paradox that only the individual can determine for his or her own life.
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Originally Posted by raytri
The reason that couples split their assets in a divorce is because they're each entitled to half of their joint belongings. The guy isn't losing half of "his" savings: he and his wife are splitting *their* savings.
Divorces are easy. They're only financially destructive if one or both spouses decide to make it a bitter, contested battle.
Are most people financially worse off after a divorce? Sure: you just divided your assets in half while going from sharing one residence to maintaining two residences. But all that proves is that two people sharing a household have lower per-person expenses than two people living singly.
When you divorce, you split the marital assets. There's no other fair way to split things up.
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