Sunday, March 12, 2017

More on Vermont Alimony Reform

An article in Seven Days on Vermont's alimony reform efforts provides an update on the reform efforts of Vermont Alimony Reform headed by Rick Fleming. It also highlights some of the issues blocking reform.
"You're a man, you're a professional, and you've been married for 15 years. You're gonna get screwed."
People consistently underestimate the injustices in alimony awards believing that there are only a few "outlier" cases which are unjust when that is simply not the reality. Injustice is common where one party is willing to act unethically and unfortunately the lure of power and money is often stronger than people's conscience.   This is, in fact, the very reason we have laws - they are supposed to insure fairness and justice. With alimony, the law unfortunately often has precisely the opposite effect.

One of the main reasons that reform is so hard is because many people believe that any reform will predominantly help men given that men are the alimony payers 97+% of the time, They forget that many of these men have spouses and significant others who are also burdened with paying the alimony to the former spouse. Even if this were not the case, how will we ever have true equality without fair and just alimony awards? Do we want equality or not?
Fleming is also relying on his second wife, Amy, to make payments to his first one. If not for Amy, he said, "I would probably be living in the back of my car."

No comments:

Post a Comment