One could argue that every stay at home parent, regardless of marriage or divorce, should one day be compensated by someone because they sacrificed their career in order to raise children.
How would you do that exactly?
I was just trying to stir the shit. In practice this would be hard. There is talk of a living wage being provided to everyone. Maybe some Scandinavian countries have this. I am quite left mined in my political views, but this just does not seam to be feasible to me.
This of course is effectively the root of the problem. There is no way to value the economic worth of someone being a stay at home and all of the measures that we use are synthetic based upon a list of assumptions. Most people don't have an ideal career and it's not unusual for people to change careers so given opperunity outside of their field that they make the switch for. I'm sure you can see the path that is going down at this point already.
Something we don't account for is that a lot of people would rather be at home with the children as opposed to sitting in a cube all day. A good argument could also be made that the high earner is being deprived of what might be their preferred activity so that they can support the family. This might result in a higher standard of living for the family as a whole at the expense of one party. If such as situation exists then couldn't an argument be made that they stay at home parent has already been intangibly compensated by being able to spend time more time with the children than the other party? If so couldn't that be used as an argument for less compensation in the even of a divorce?
True. Not that staying at home is not "work". But an enviable bond can be created with your children. Something that almost every parent would want if they could. Hence, a lot of us are on this MMM forum ;)
I know a couple where they both had very similar jobs and minimal educations. One made about 10% more; $40K vs $45K. Lets call one Low-earner-looser (LEL). Baby was born both took some leave for 1y (possible in Canada) then baby 2 was born. After the leaves were over, the original plan was for full time child care. The higher earner would have loved to stay home. Last second the LEL said they would only work part time, and thanks to shifting schedules and the higher earner's parents
free help 4h/day, no child care was needed. One of the reason's for the LEL to earn less was to "pay less tax" and "pay less child support" to ex-spouse. Higher earner naively agreed.
Although LEL was with the kids from about 1:00-5:00 weekdays. Higher earner was still in charge of morning routine, dinner, bedtime, appointments etc.
3y later the LEL wants their second divorce. They may now be entitled to child support from higher-earner spouse #2. I know LEL intentionally kept their income lower to pay the first ex less. It wasn't a big secret and I thought they were an a$$ for doing so, & bragging about it.
Both people were on the same trajectory when they met. Same education, same company, LEL even had 2 more year's experience. But even before kids LEL would not take more hours or promotions and high-earner took every chance to move up. I have very strong suspicions LEL knew exactly what they were doing when they dropped down from a manager's job, to hourly, to part time, to "no problem I will watch the kids in the afternoon", while I nap & watch TV. LEL has gamed the system so they may get support from the second higher earner ex. Their incomes are now about $45K $75K.
High-earner is definitely pissed that they didn't get to spend more time with the kids, and may have to financially pay LEL going forward.
Maybe LEL just doesn't want to work that hard or earn that much. That's fine, but don't expect to get support from high-earner.