I is for Incentive, Part III

Or, in some cases, Dis-Incentive

This post continues my series on the relative incentives or disincentives to marriage and divorce in different states, ranking them by their friendliness to men.

On the topic of incentives and disincentives, it occurs to me that a disincentive to marry for a man may be percieved by a significant percentage of the female population as an incentive to marry. So, in other words, one reason why we don't see a good correlation between states with worse laws for men and reduced marriage rates, might be that these laws actually incentivize women, causing them to be more eager for marriage, and to be willing to do more to get to that hallowed and highly lucrative state. After all, all you need is to get one hard-working and slightly naiive man to stay married to you for a few years, and have a child (a goal for many women anyway) and voilla! you have a second income for decades, perhaps even life, and everyone mooning over your hard luck with lots of sympathy.

I was thinking, and I figured that my last post was probably over-complex, with weighting factors and all - leaving readers saying, 'but, how do we know if we agree with his weightings?' and 'but what if he did the math wrong?' and wanting some simpler presentation of some of the basic facts. So I thought a simple list might help with that:

States where child support (supposedly) is not a percentage of income, and alimony ignores standard of living:
West Virginia
Wyoming
Oklahoma
Maine
Indiana
Kansas - state divides non-marital assets in divorce
Idaho - state divides non-marital assets in divorce
Louisiana - state divides non-marital assets in divorce

States where, although Child Support is a percentage, Alimony is not:
Mississippi
Arkansas
North Dakota - state divides non-marital assets in divorce

Perhaps tomorrow, I will go looking on the web to try and see if divorces in these states really reflect the supposedly advantageous legal situation that the data seems to show, or if the laws are ignored in order to care for the victim (woman), as we saw was happening in NY and NJ in U is for Unequal.

-M

Data for this study came from Abanet.