DeSantis should abolish permanent alimony and make divorcees work for their keep
Tiana Lowe
For over a decade now, Florida Republicans have unsuccessfully tried to modernize their state’s alimony law for the 21st century. At every step, Republican governors have thwarted pro-family reforms.
After his 20-point reelection margin, Ron DeSantis has the political capital and the opportunity for further electoral gains to finally reform antiquated alimony laws to make it fairer for Sunshine State’s tax base of working mothers and fathers.
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Under current Florida law, divorced workers are automatically on the hook for alimony payments until they die if the marriage lasted as little as 17 years. This amount of alimony is onerous to a breadwinning spouse, forced to bankroll an unemployed spouse to maintain his or her standard of living as it was during the marriage.
Because Florida is a no-fault divorce state, the alimony recipient can also be the spouse who instigated the divorce for any reason.
The alimony reform will abolish permanent alimony and crucially demand that judges begin cases with the assumption that both spouses gain equal custody of minor children. The reform limits “rehabilitative alimony” — that is, temporary alimony granted while the unemployed spouse finds a job — to five years and mandates the assumption that both parties will have a lower standard of living as a result of reneging on their marriage. The law also better scales durational alimony, banning it in cases of marriages shorter than three years.
This is all entirely separate from child support payments and custody arrangements.
Naturally, the shamelessly named “First Wives Advocacy” group has lobbied against the bill. One of the unemployed activists, Camille Fiveash, whined to the Tampa Bay Times that she has been bankrolled solely by alimony for the last 12 years.
“I’m going to be destitute and dependent on the state, and I’m going to be collecting food stamps and everything else,” said Fiveash.
Will this bill really impoverish you? If it does, it nearly proves why it should be passed. It will force her to go out and actually get a damned job.
Statistically speaking, new hires have never had it better than they do now, thanks to the tight labor market.
Alimony made sense when divorce was only granted in cases of marital misconduct. An abuser or adulterer absolutely should be financially penalized for breaking the fundamental covenant of marriage and thus prevented from being able to afford to trap another spouse in a marriage financially. But with the advent of no-fault divorce, alimony is just a punishment for contributing to the economy.
It makes even less sense in a world where women now have equal rights in the workplace and actually outpace men in academia.
Half a century ago, a woman would not necessarily return to the workplace after her children began to go to school because, in many cases, she couldn’t. Not only were women discriminated against in the labor market, but they were also sexually harassed at significantly higher numbers than today. But thanks to landmark civil rights bills preventing discrimination against women on the basis of their gender, marital status, motherhood, or lack thereof, the share of women in the labor force has risen from one-third in the 1950s to 57% today.
Today, one parent can spend a few years having young children and immediately return to the workplace once those children go to school. Florida’s bill would still subsidize that time taken off employment, but no longer would a spouse — potentially one who didn’t even want to divorce in the first place — be obligated to subsidize a lifetime of their other spouse refusing to contribute to the economy.
The “First Wives Advocacy” group claims to represent the interest of “women, mothers, and children,” but it’s hard to imagine any proportion less feminist and less pro-family that telling women they must depend on the husbands they abandon and both women and men that they may have to pay an abuser or adulteress for the rest of their lives if they commit to marriage. After all, men are slowly becoming a greater share of alimony recipients, meaning that the prime beneficiaries of the current law aren’t women, but rather slackers of both genders.
None of this is to mention the economic argument.
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Those “First Wives” who brag about living off of their spouse’s largesse are directly contributing to the bankruptcy of Social Security and the worsening debt load of the young workers responsible for keeping the entire American economy afloat. The greatest economy on the planet cannot remain supreme if pre-retirement age workers with no disability or preschool children refuse to get off the couch and work.
DeSantis has the political capital to right a grievous wrong, and he should take it. Alimony reform would be a reminder that equality also trumps the redistributionism of equity.