If you’re a man considering marriage, there are some statistics you should know before you go ring shopping.
Today, more than 50% of marriages in the U.S. end in divorce.
What many people don’t know is that women initiate approximately 70% of all divorces. Interesting, since men as a gender are the ones who are typically shamed for being commitment phobic and not willing to settle down.
An article on a marriage support website states that women primarily file for divorce because they feel “neglected.”
Author and researcher Deirdre Bair finds that women are generally the initiators of divorce worldwide, not just in the U.S.
In my opinion, the primary reason women initiate divorces in 70% of divorces cases is because most women stand to gain far more than they have to lose if they choose to divorce.
Even though women initiate approximately 70% of divorces, men are frequently ordered to pay their ex-wives legal costs. So, in addition to potentially losing their assets, their homes and their children, men are also expected to pay for the privilege of being emotionally and financially eviscerated by their ex-wives.
Not only do women initiate 70% of divorces, women are awarded primary custody in 82.6% of custody cases and this figure has remained largely unchanged since the 1994 U.S. Census.
Courts typically refuse to lower child support payments when a father’s income drops. The Bradley Amendment, which was passed in 1986, forbids any reduction in child support arrears, even if the father is disabled.
The amendment ensures that even if a man can prove he is the victim of paternity fraud, that he cannot be absolved from paying child support to a child that is not his biological offspring, which brings us to another disturbing statistic.
Approximately 30% of paternity tests submitted come back negative. That’s nearly one-third of challenged paternity cases proving the woman lied.
What about brave men who marry a second time? Men can have their new spouses’ income held against them and used to extort more child and spousal support to their ex-wives.
This is nothing more than a “backhanded way of tapping into a second spouse’s income” to pay for the ex who believes she shouldn’t have to work because she was once married to her ex once upon a time or wants to maintain that magical and totally unrealistic “marital standard of living.”
However, if the ex-wife remarries, her new spouse is under no legal obligation to financially support his stepchildren. The court’s rationale? Hey, they’re not his children and, therefore, not his responsibility. Yet, it is the new wife’s responsibility to give a portion of her salary to her husband’s ex-wife and children. Can someone please explain to the logic of this to me?
In many states, long after a divorce has been settled, ex-wives can come after their ex-husbands to shake down their retirement plans — even after they received a portion of the man’s retirement during the divorce settlement! This essentially allows some ex-wives to “double dip” into their exes’ retirement savings.
Here’s another statistic: Divorced and separated men are two and a half times more likely to commit suicide than married men. Divorce, however, doesn’t seem to lead more women to commit suicide. Separated and divorced male suicides outnumber their female counterparts by 4 to 1.
Marriage rates are on the decline in the U.S. and worldwide as many men are deciding to opt out of marriage due to the extremely unfair nature of divorce and custody “awards” and the extremely entitled attitudes of many women (MGTOW and the Herbivores) and I can’t say as I blame them.
The above is an abridged version, (due to space constraints), of an article by female consultant, Dr Tara J. Palmatier.
The full article can be viewed at: