The Marriage Buyout: The Troubled Trajectory of U.S. Alimony Law

From divorce court to popular culture, alimonyis a dirty word. Unpopular and rarely ordered, the awards are frequentlyinconsistent and unpredictable. The institution itself is often viewed as anhistorical relic that harkens back to a gendered past in which women lacked theeconomic independence to free themselves from economic support by their spouses.In short, critics of alimony claim it has no place in contemporary visions ofmarriage as a partnership of equals. But as Cynthia Lee Starnes argues in TheMarriage Buyout , alimony is often the only practical tool for ensuring that divorce does not treattoday's primary caregivers as if they were suckers. Her solution is toradically reconceptualize alimony as a marriage buyout.

Starnes's buyouts draw on a partnership model of marriage that reinforcescommunal norms of marriage, providing a gender-neutral alternative to alimonythat assumes equality in spousal contribution, responsibility, and right. Herquantification formulae support new default rules that make buyouts morecertain and predictable than their current alimony counterparts. Looking beyondalimony, Starnes outlines a new vision of marriages with children, describing aco-parenting partnership between committed couples, and the conceptual basisfor income sharing between divorced parents of minor children. Ultimately,under a partnership model, the focus of alimony is on gain rather than loss andequality rather than power: a spouse with disparately low earnings isn't asucker or a victim dependent on a fixed alimony payment, but rather an equalstakeholder in marriage who is entitled at divorce to share any gains themarriage produced.

Acknowledgments Introduction Part I. Alimony Reflections 1. Who Cares about Alimony? 2. Alimony's Heritage: The Helpless, the Blameless, and the Clean-Break Losers 3. Alimony and Mother Myths Part II. Alimony Mechanics 4. The Contemporary State of Alimony 5. Alimony in Context: A Comparative Perspective Part III. Alimony Theory6. Reasons Matter: Alimony, Intuition, and the Remarriage Termination Rule7. The Search for a Contemporary RationalePart IV: Alimony Reform8. A Marital Partnership Model: Alimony as Buyout9. Beyond Alimony: Lovers, Parents, and PartnersConclusionNotesIndexAbout the Author