T is for This requires comment...

One thing that is true about humans is that they do something, and then make up the reasons for it later.

In this case we have what I am sure is a lovely woman (Hannah Seligson), explaining why she isn't getting married.

Apparently there are 'un-travelled continents and four more career paths to explore'.

And there are. Career paths and continents, which can't be explored if:

1) no one has a very high-paying career to pay for them, and
2) no one has been roped into a divorce settlement to pay for them.

Now I do think Hannah is probably a decent partner, as she tracks her purchases with an eye to dividing it up based on who paid for what, and tries to avoid the messy divorces of the previous generation, but I wonder...

I wonder if she really would, after a 12-year non-married relationship, walk away with just the things she personally bought - or if she would walk across the street to the lawyers office, and discover that palimony is just as good as marriage, and take her ex 'partner' for everything she could get. I can hear her muttering about how 'that bastard took the best years of my life', and feeling all justified as she turns him into a slave for the rest of his.

Unfair? Unrealistic? Not if you look at the statistics. No, unfortunately, financially enslaving your ex is big business, and if Hannah resists the temptation, she is the exception, not the rule.

The delay in marriage might have something to do with unexplored contients and careers, but it is, in my opinion, mostly about men avoiding slavery.

Why did this particular essay tweak me enough to post? Because it reeked so strongly of sour grapes. Rare is the man who doesn't want to find a good woman, and raise children with her. Even more rare is the PERSON (no sexism in this post) who can resist enslaving their ex and ensuring their future casual explorations of careers an continents when the state hands it to them on a silver platter, courtesy of the partner whom they now dislike.

-And the tightness of the marriage market is all about this. With a judiciary/legal system that thinks that men were built to support women, no matter WHAT they do (no fault, remember?) marriage is going to become more and more rare.

It's not about 'adulthood', or the length of 'careers' - marriages and kids were more common when we were mostly working on farms and in sweatshops, and when 'success' was something that never happened. And it isn't about exploration, although the exploration is in there, but mostly by the women, and at the man's expense.

My Best To You In Your Struggles

-M

G is for Getting Married?

Getting Married?

Thinking about it?

If so, you should take a moment to read this post.

Did you know that better than 60% of marriages end in divorce?

Did you know that women file the vast majority of those divorces?

Did you know that in the vast majority of divorces, women get your children, and you get to visit them on occasion if you are lucky - and women get better than half the assets, and women usually get the house to live in until things get divided, and women generally get support of some sort?

Ok, with that in mind.... ...look at the picture below.

This is an UNEMPLOYMENT PAYMENT CONFIRMATION. This one is for a top earner, who is getting the maximum unemployment possible. He's been out of work for almost 2 years. Take a moment to review it. I'll wait....

Ok, notice anything funny about it?

-Like how the gross is over %1,000 for two weeks, but the actual amount of the check is $280?

Where the heck did all that money go?

Well, see - right there - most of it went to 'Garnishment'. This man, who has his kids, who is out of work for years, loses 65% of his unemployment to his ex-wife.

Want to know what her gross income is?

Would it suprise you to know that she brings home over $100,000?

You may say: Oh, he just needs to go back to court to get that thing adjusted.

Yeah.

Would it suprise you to learn that he had been back to court?

That in fact, his ex-wife SUED him for a 'violation' of her rights - because he wasn't paying the full amount of her 'support'?

Would it suprise you that not only did the court not reduce his payments, but that it increased them?

Well, if any of this suprises you, you just plain don't know how the game is played here in good sweet ol' New Jersey.

So, I ask again...

Are You SURE You're Getting Married?


My Best To You In Your Struggles

-M

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H is for Humanity

We are proud of our culture.
We are proud of our Humanity.
We are proud of the way we care for others,
We are proud of our legal system,
And its protection for all.

But where’s the humanity –
In a culture that awards 'support' to eighty percent of its custodial mothers –
- but only thirty percent of its custodial fathers?
In a culture that denies almost forty percent of its fathers any access to their children?
In a culture where almost eighty percent of non-custodial fathers are denied any visitation?
In a culture where two thirds of dads who don’t pay support are unable to –
- but are labeled deadbeats?
- are denied adjustments?
- have their possessions seized?
- have their licenses and passports taken?
- have their unemployment, if they are lucky enough to get it, garnished to 65%?
- are thrown in jail?

Where’s the humanity in a system that claims that
‘unemployment and underemployment are no grounds for a modification in support’?

While The Poverty Studies Institute at the University of Wisconsin’s 1993 study found 52% of fathers who owe child support earn less than $6,155 per year.

Less than six thousand dollars a year.

While our 'humane government' pursues them.
Blackmails their families, and incarcerates them.

Where’s the humanity?

I’m sorry to say it isn’t in the system.
It isn’t in the government,
And it isn’t with the women.

This isn’t humanity. This is slavery.

And it stinks.

-M

M is for Murder

Recently a poor woman was murdered, beaten to death in the Hopatcong area.

The news helpfully tells us she is divorced for some time, with teenaged sons, and was in just a couple days about to use the courts to seek full custody - to cut the boys off from their father, while seeking more support.

We read between the lines that of course the ex-husband is a primary suspect.

Which makes perfect sense.

When you take away all rights from a man, turn him into a slave, and make him pay for all your legal assaults on him, while laying the burden of proof on him, and try to take away his children, rage and violence are actually reasonable.

And this is what is troubling me again today.

At what point is it appropriate for the slave to revolt? Does his life have to be at risk? Or is a life (or twenty years) of unrelenting subjugation worth killing to escape? How about ten years?

Ma Jersey herself gives us a hint: if you murder someone in a crime of passion, and are truly regretful, and well behaved in jail, you can be back out on the streets in as little as five years.

So Ma Jersey is telling us that we should kill our wives when they win unreasonably onerous judgements against us that will lock us into slavery for significantly more than five years.

But beating her to death? Surely that is over the top? Again, Ma Jersey steps in to help us out with the question. If you bought a gun, and ammo, and loaded the gun, and brought it to where your ex wife was, and pulled the gun, and shot her... ...that would show a lot of premeditation. If you instead showed up at the home you bought with the money that you earned and that she owns now, and bludgeoned her to death with one of her mahogany chairs, or one of her equestrian trophies, or one of her designer golf clubs, or crushed her under her antique china cabinet, that's a crime of passion. Premeditated murder can get you life as a man. (As a woman, premeditated murder of your ex can get you free therapy.) Crimes of passion are more forgivable, per Ma Jersey.

Sigh.

I FEEL like ending this post here, saying that I won't address the MORAL aspects of the situation until Ma Jersey addresses the moral aspects of reducing divorced men to slaves... ...but that itself would be immoral.

Folks, even though Ma Jersey seems to find some balance between a ten year alimony/support sentance and a crime-of-passion murder, it isn't O.K. to kill your ex-wife. Morally, the slave should not kill the master unless his mortal life is at risk. Instead, your duty, if you cannot or will not bear the slavery, is to run away. Escape it somehow.

Yes, you may be relegated to a much more limited life, in a foreign or remote region, but that is the trade-off. You are a legal slave in the US. The state will be 100% against you, and 100% for her. If you stay here, she can take the majority of your earnings and all your assets. So you can earn nothing and own nothing, live at risk of having everything taken, live as a slave, or leave the country. Morally, murdering her for just stealing from you and enslaving you is wrong.

You f*ked up, and let yourself become a breadwinner for a parasite.

A parasite with legal rights, and a soul, whose life you are morally and legally forbidden to end.

It needs to be said again and again;
Don't live with women
Don't earn more than your woman
Don't marry women

Because sooner or later, they will become bored with you, tired of you, annoyed with you, and realize that they can have all the financial benefits of being married to you, and most of your assets, without having to put up with you, yourself. -by casting you into legal slavery.

And that's a tempatation that most women cannot resist, *and the most likely outcome of marriage* - an outcome men don't have the legal right to resist.

Don't live with women
Don't earn more than your woman
Don't marry women

Unless, of course, being a slave is something you have always aspired to.

MBTYIYS:
M