Should Heather get the money?

Danny asks why Heather should get so much money from divorcing Paul.  I reckon it's because a general law which gives women alimony has three benefits. These occur even if the woman doesn't sacrifice earnings during the marriage,  if there are no children, and if the woman has done nothing to improve the man's wealth. They are:
1. It improves women's bargaining power within the marriage, by increasing women's outside options and by giving the threat of divorce more sting to the man. Insofar as men are the most powerful partners in a marriage, this is equitable and - assuming diminishing marginal utility to the things partners bargain over - potentially efficient*. Simon Clark makes this point here.
2. It gives high-earning women more incentive to marry, and so improves the pool of women available to men who want to marry. What other reason would Carla have to marry Tony?
3. It improves the quality of marriages, because if a man knows a divorce will be costly, he'll be less inclined to fall into marriage with the first woman to come along.
The problem is, though, that there's a trade-off between points 2 and 3; whilst alimony incentivizes women to marry, it disincentivizes men. Traditional thinking holds that this is a bad idea, as women want to marry more than men do, perhaps because their assets (looks) depreciate more than men's (money), and so they have more desire to lock in the value of their assets. However, Paul's initial willingness to marry Heather in the first place suggests this isn't universally true.
* For example, if the first hour a week of housework is less irksome to men than the 20th hour is to a woman, anything that increases women's ability to transfer one hour of work to the man yields a bigger welfare gain to her than loss to him.

Comments

[ad]

Personally I am tempted to deregulate the marriage market by making pre-nups binding.

After all, economists are usually keen to tell us how deregulating a market leaves everyone better off.

[kinglear]

You may well ask what on earth prompted Macca to marry she who is universally condemned as Mucca.
I suspect it may be to do with sexual pecadilloes. I was always told that the reason Edward was so besotted with Wallis was his complete ignorance of anything but the missionary position. After all, if the Heir to the Throne wants to do it that way, who would argue? Being American, she had slightly less deference and did it her way...

[Matt Munro]

The major disadvantage you haven't mentioned is that it incentivizes women to leave marriages and create one parent, often state dependent, dysfunctional "families".
Increased equality should lead to a position where there is no liability for an ex wife/husband, beyond jointly acquired assets (and looking after the kids while your husband makes a killing in hedge funds does NOT make said killing jointly acquired) but the opposite seems to have happened with divorce now being more costly (for men) than it was in the 1970s. I blame feminists, and social workers.

[Accipeter]

Matt, if "looking after the kids while your husband makes a killing in hedge funds does NOT make said killing jointly acquired," then what possible motivation would a woman have to forego her own earning potential and economic independence in order to stay home with the kids? If she has no rights to assets created by her husband while she stays home (usually at his insistence), raises his kids, and keeps his house, then why on earth should she stay home at all? Especially if (according to your scenario) the husband can then divorce her with no financial obligations to her whatsoever (since the assets are not considered "jointly acquired"), dooming her to poverty because she gave up most of her earning potential by staying home? Sounds like a crappy deal to me. How many men would be willing to stay home and raise their kids if they knew they weren't entitled to half their wives' earnings/wealth should divorce happen?

If you think that married people should not jointly own assets created during their lives together, then what other motivation would you suggest for one spouse to stay home and raise the kids, foregoing his/her earning potential (not to mention the ability to invest for retirement, etc.)?

[Matt Munro]

By the same token what motivates men to get married, now that they stand to lose their kids, their house and half of everything they have ever and will ever earn/own if Miss Right turns out to be Mrs ran off with my best mate ? I guess the falling marriage rate gives you the answer.

Surely the point is that marriage should not be reduced to a financial trasaction, or treated as some sort of risk/reward equation. Having children, a roof over her head and the bills paid should be a sufficient motivation for women to marry. The "forgoeing my earning power" argument is just feminist dogma/capitalist conditioning. If men were supported by their wives in doing the earning, rather than hindered by their wives "careers", women wouldn't need earning power in the first place.
Similarly, a male heir, along with an ironed shirt, a clean house, a hot meal and the occasional bit of rumpy pumpy should be sufficient motivation for men to marry. The fact that men are increasingly rejecting marraige illustrates that they no longer meet women who are prepared to fulfill their part of the bargain. Hell, most women under 40 can't or won't even look after their own kids.

Marriage is a social contract, in the days of "equality", why must it still be an economic one ?