> It truly baffles me how alimony is even legal today. Based on how alimony is treated, marriage is essentially indentured servitude.

The US has no guaranteed parental leave. If you have a kid and want one parent to spend any significant time with that kid, someone is sacrificing their career advancement. This usually hits women harder.

If you want to see the end of alimony, you’d need to make it easier to choose to have kids. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be a priority in the US.

> you’d need to make it easier to choose to have kids. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be a priority in the US

This seems to be the case in every “developed” country

Society turns into a work machine that devalues having and raising kids

The US is particularly bad, but this is happening everywhere

This seems very biased to me since it's often that both parents make career sacrifices, not just one.

Even if we accept what you're saying, that still doesn't address why this should be legal. You even say "want", so it is a choice. There's absolutely no reason that an able-bodied person of sound mind can't support themself. The state forcing another person to pay for that person's higher standard of living is absurd.

> This seems very biased to me since it's often that both parents make career sacrifices, not just one.

With adoption, maybe, but carrying and bearing a child has a life-altering impact on a woman's body. It's not like you can give birth and go back to the office on Monday. It takes months to recover and even after that you likely won't be at full performance like you were before the pregnancy. Common side effects like post partum depression can easily linger for years if not given time and treatment. Quality of life is also quite terrible for the last while before giving birth, not just because of changes in physical size but also the lack of sleep and what a mental impact that could easily be described as mental illness if it wouldn't coincide with pregnancy.

As a man, I seriously don't know how women do it, and how many even do it multiple times.

The notion that two people make equal sacrifices when they have a child is laughable. Of course, in a healthy relationship both parties make sacrifices, but it's impossible to equate the sacrifices they make. Perhaps it's technically possible if two women both decide to give birth from a donor father, one after the other or at the same time, abut that's absurdly rare.

> As a man, I seriously don't know how women do it, and how many even do it multiple times.

Are you aware you are praising women for something any female in any species does ? Sure it is not always easy, but if a woman has children it's (unless some quite obvious reasons) because the benefits outweighs the inconveniences. This is not some heroic deed.

> The notion that two people make equal sacrifices when they have a child is laughable.

You only focus on the short-term (potential) medical issues, but if you take into account the long-term and a broader view, things average out and can even be a net benefit for women through the current laws in most western countries.

Has anyone told the women that? Because they don’t seem to think so. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2019/aug/04/men-wom...

"It takes months to recover and even after that you likely won't be at full performance like you were before the pregnancy. ... Quality of life is also quite terrible for the last while before giving birth, not just because of changes in physical size but also the lack of sleep and what a mental impact that could easily be described as mental illness if it wouldn't coincide with pregnancy."

That's not a typical experience. Please don't cherry pick. Otherwise I can cherry pick the other direction and say my wife was working from the hospital bed, and that there is a video of a woman running a mile or something like that while pregnant with her second child and bearing her prior pregnancy record. I'm so tired of this emotionally driven BS.

"Common side effects like post partum depression can easily linger for years if not given time and treatment."

This is a medical disability and should be handled as such. Same for men suffering from depression or anxiety from the pressures of providing for a family.

"The notion that two people make equal sacrifices when they have a child is laughable."

It's going to vary by situation, but you clearly aren't using a systems thinking approach to see the whole picture. It seems you're stuck on the typical indoctrination material. You still haven't answered anything about the actual topic of alimony. For example, what happens when the woman didn't have a career to begin with and had no real prospects? They didn't sacrifice anything career-wise. Different people have different earning potentials. I believe it's unethical to allow a system where someone can marry and take more from someone else than they could make on their own. I also believe this applies equally.

The extreme emphasis on monetary earnings is precisely the reason alimony exists. Not all labor is paid for with money. Emotional labor, child rearing, homemaking — these are difficult to quantify in monetary terms but certainly play a role in the “success” of the household.

These are also things that both parties generally share in, and that both parties will need to do for themselves after a divorce. Again, there is no reason for an able-bodied person of sound mind to not be able to support themself. Doing away with alimony will remove the flawed incentives that create any unequal balance that we see today. Not to mention, in some states alimony is mandatory after a number of years of marriage- so it has nothing to do with the breakdown of who did more chores or what one deserves.

Alimony is essential in cultures and marriages where one person gets to make a career for themselves and the other does the household chores, takes care of the children, and so forth.

It's also essential in places where having a child severely decreases your chances of making a career for yourself. Think places where there's no guaranteed parental leave, or where there's only one parent who gets parental leave (making them much less desirable for employers).

There are plenty of cases where these restrictions aren't relevant (i.e. same sex partners (no gender discrimination) without children (no childcare obligations) both making careers), but those cases are a small minority of all the marriages that break up.

I agree that the way many alimony laws work is outdated, but they vary wildly and are there for good reason.

"Alimony is essential in cultures and marriages where one person gets to make a career for themselves and the other does the household chores, takes care of the children, and so forth."

There are many cultures in the US. They way you describe it seems very old fashioned, which is not that common these days.

I'd rather see alimony removed. If you do that, people will choose arrangements that better suit them. If you leave this archaic system in place, it will promote less efficient decisions and continue to pose the other problems in the asymmetrical relationship you describe.

>There are many cultures in the US. They way you describe it seems very old fashioned, which is not that common these days.

I think single income households will make a comeback. Increasingly, domestic work, such as childcare, cooking, cleaning, etc., is so expensive that you'd need to make an above average wage just to afford it. A lot of the work is low "productivity" and does not lend itself to automation.

"Increasingly, domestic work, such as childcare, cooking, cleaning, etc., is so expensive that you'd need to make an above average wage just to afford it."

Most people don't pay for domestic work. Most people do the chores themselves. Childcare costs can be an issue in some situations. I don't see us ever going back to single income families on a large scale. It's pretty simple, costs are too high and real pay continues to erode.

> process that typically costs as much as each party buying a car, and takes months or years to complete

Isn't that the nature of the beast? When you get married everything is easy; you're happy and cooperating. When you're getting divorced you're upset and fighting.

If everything was ended amicably without lawyers you'd only be out a few hundred bucks.

"If everything was ended amicably without lawyers you'd only be out a few hundred bucks."

But that's not even possible. Even the people I've known who split amicably still required lawyers. This goes back to the asymmetrical legal aspects of getting married vs dissolving one. You don't need to draw up a contract, disclose assets, or anything when getting married. You just adopt the standard contract as defined by the government. When divorcing, you are required to disclose assets, have property assessed, you need to split up the assets, and work out child care/cost details. You could likely work out a lot of this, but in general you still need a lawyer to make sure the agreement checks all the legal boxes. Then the state needs to approve it. Even if both parties agree, the state may not allow you to make certain agreements if they don't like it, or they think it's no longer fair (prenup). There are even law firms that offer amicable divorce services - they still cost thousands of dollars.

Even if you could file yourself, it costs about 10x the cost to get a marriage license.

How do long cohabitating folks handle it? What if they comingle funds?