How to prepare to request alimony

Preparing to ask for alimony requires getting creative.  You must pay attention to financial matters and career issues that you may have put aside when you decided to stay home or take lower paying jobs in order to follow your spouse’s career.  Many stay-at-home spouses intentionally ignore financial information and cultivate an attitude of naivete about the cost of the big picture of their lives.  But you no longer have a partner to split the responsibilities of maintaining a household with.  Your soon-to-be ex spouse will have to do his own grocery shopping, cooking and cleaning, and you will have to take care of your own car and figure out how to bring enough money into your household to make ends meet.  And to do this, you need to know how much it takes to make ends meet, and what resources do you have.  These are similar to the things you’d need to know if your spouse passed away.  The basic question the judge will have is, “how do you plan to finance your life, now that the job of stay-at-home spouse is no longer available?”

                Even before the initial shock of the separation and imminent divorce is over, you need to start figuring out what your expenses will be.  What will your mortgage or rent and utilities be?  How about medical expenses?  Transportation?  Food, clothing and entertainment?  Your lawyer will have worksheets to help you estimate how much you need.  Unless the two of you together were able to save money like crazy, you will never get enough money to support your whole lifestyle, from your ex.  You will likely have to reduce your expectations, as will he.  And they will never demand that more than half of his paycheck go to support you.  You may need to have a roof over your head and food.  But he also needs those things, plus he needs to do his own cooking and cleaning now that you’re gone, and he probably needs transportation and work clothes.  The job of staying at home to take care of his house and kids, is no longer yours and you must make plans to pick up some of the slack in terms of bringing in money.  One income simply will not split into two households, so things need to change.

                Do you have a job yet?  If now, then the judge will ask why not?  When you found out about the separation, why did you not run straight out to get work?  Have an answer to this question available, even if it does not sound like a pretty answer, so that the judge will understand that you tried, or why you could not try.

                Figure out what your career requires in order for you to rehabilitate it.  If you were licensed to perform work, but gave up your license because you were not working at that occupation, what will it take to get that license back?  Do you quit college or give up other schooling in order to get married or raise children?  If so, what will it take to finish your education and get up to speed in your career?  Have you moved around the country to follow your spouse’s job opportunities and lost your own opportunities in the process?  What would it take to fix that?  If you have been unemployed for so long that you do not know what is available to you, start talking to people, make connections, find work.  If you are lucky enough to have other sources of income (like a trust fund or savings accounts), this will help you get by.  Tell the judge that you are counting on it, and also remind the judge that you have the right to come out of the marriage with just as much STUFF as your ex does, without having to sell all the furniture to finance the rehabilitation of your career.  Do not try to convince a judge that you have been living off of zero for the past year during a separation, and that you have no resources and must live 100% off your ex.  Tell the judge how you supported yourself during the separation and why this source of support should not be counted on as a continuing source. 

If you are unlucky enough to be disabled and unable to work, and you hope for the judge to agree with you, then please go apply for disability now, if you have not done so already!  A disability determination in social security court will certainly help persuade the judge in your divorce, that you are unable to work.  If, on the other hand, your disability is that you have frequent migraines and must stay in bed 20 hours a day (I had one client whose ex tried to convince the judge of this), remember that this will mean you might be telling the judge that you cannot be a fit mother to your very active children who need supervision more than 4 hours a day (my client’s ex did not count on this). 

                Whatever you do, make some plan to support yourself.  If the only work you can find is as a greeter at WalMart, take the job to show that you are being industrious and trying to make ends meet in your separation.  Figure out how to work the child-rearing around your job, and if this means making your ex step up to the plate and share in these duties, make sure he is aware of this and has enough advance notice that he can arrange his own time off work when it’s his day to maintain the kids.  Do not count on a judge agreeing with you that your children should never need daycare, sitters, or after school care. 

Figure out how much you will need from your ex to make up the difference between your pay and your expenses.  If your way of supporting yourself happens to be finding a new lover, understand that the courts are not likely to agree with you that your soon-to-be ex should support you and your new lover.   Calculate child care expenses separately, because those will be requested as part of the child support amount.  Don’t try to get daycare and babysitters paid for by your alimony.  You don’t want this, anyways, because you have to pay taxes on your alimony, but you don’t get taxed on the child support that you receive, so you want your ex to pay for child-issues in a separate amount than in your spousal support check.

                Gather information about what you did to support your ex’s school or career, and how his career or your support caused a detriment to your own career.  Be prepared to explain what it will take to rehabilitate your career.  Be realistic.  If your career cannot be rehabilitated, don’t expect the judge to order him to pay for it.  If you were a 110 lb world class prima ballerina who has gained 150 lbs, had 3 kids and is now 20 years older, it’s going to be different than if you were a hair stylist who stopped paying for her license just last year and has only been away from work for 5 years.  If you were a teacher who married a doctor and were in divorce court 2 years later, do not expect the judge to make your doctor ex husband make up the difference between your teacher’s salary and his doctor’s salary, for live.  Getting a man to say “I do” is not like winning the lottery.  It’s more like getting a job, and if the marriage is over, the job is over.  The judge needs to hear your realistic plan for your new life.  Everyone in the courtroom knows it will not be easy.  It’s called “work” for a reason.  But divorce means that the opportunity to have someone else support you while you make sure the house is spotless and the kids’ homework is done, is gone.   As a career choice, "stay at home housewife" only exists for as long as the marriage exists.  More on that later. 

                The judge hears from many people daily about how easy or difficult it is to get a job today, and will have an idea of how long it should take YOU to get something new going, so if you exaggerate or procrastinate, the judge will know.  And will give you less than you request.  If you go ahead and make a realistic plan and start to follow through on it, the judge will know that you are being realistic and will be more likely to give you what you need. 

Your best bet in convincing a judge to give you as much alimony as possible is to figure out how much you need, make a plan for how to get to where you are self supporting, show that you are being industrious, and calculate the difference between what you can earn and what you need.

Explain why I can not get permanent alimony. What is Rehabilitative alimony?

Very few people qualify for permanent alimony any more.  In the 1950s, it seems that permanent alimony was the standard, and unfortunately, movies such as “the Odd Couple”, gave us the impression that this is how divorce is, and should be, handled.  That getting a man down the aisle and saying “I do” was like winning the lottery for a woman.  That she would, forever after, be entitled to have him support her “in the style to which she has become accustomed”. 

If you are separating or divorcing in the 21^st century, wipe those thoughts out of your vocabulary.  In the 1950s, women had been bumped out of the workforce by men returning from WWII.  Men ruled the roost and “the little lady” (a), could not get good employment outside of the home and (b), was given an allowance by her husband to use to keep the household running.  Men did not lift a finger to diaper the children, were banned from the delivery room, even, and basically did not show up in their children’s lives except to cheer them on at little league or other special events.  In a divorce, the women always got the children, and without the assistance of the father to raise the children, they were not expected to “go back to” work.  There was no “back” to get to, back then.

Someone, in some movie, decided that “the style to which she has become accustomed” was the standard that the man had to provide for the woman.  While this may be one factor used in determining what amount to award in alimony cases, the reality is that one cannot take one income, split it in two, and manage to keep EITHER party in the style to which it has become accustomed if the other party is to have any possibility of living, themselves.  Many other factors come into play as well.  That held true in the 1940s and 50s, and is more true now, as people have been living beyond their means in the first place, and are divorcing with tons of debts outstanding. 

In the 60 years since the times where alimony to a woman was expected, we worked hard to get more opportunity for women in the workforce.  Men worked just as hard to become more a part of their children’s lives.   There has been a change in the way divorce is handled as well.  Even if you chose a traditional family constellation for your household, a woman still has more opportunity than her mother/grandmother.  And even for the husband working full time while supporting a stay-at-home wife, he probably still changes more diapers, does more homework with, and handles more issues about raising the kids more his father and grandfather before him.  Each new generation brings new opportunities.  And divorces have changed to reflect these opportunities.

No one will tell a loving couple whether or not they are allowed to choose to have either family member stay home and not earn money, so long as they are living within their means and not asking the court to mediate their differences, but where a couple has separated and one of them asks for the court to order their partner to help maintain the family, the choices to keep one of them unemployed are reviewed and may require change.  Some general principles have emerged as part of this, but the rules are constantly changing.  No one can look at what happened in their friend’s case, or look up the rules on the internet, and expect them to stay the same.  In general, as time progresses, it seems the Courts are less paternalistic… there is less coddling of women.  Women are less likely to be able to claim total dependency.  Judges are less willing to believe that women are incompetent and incapable of fending for themselves in the working world.  And the courts are giving more respect to the position of “father”, as being an important and valuable one to enforce. 

What remains in this new way of thinking, is that many families who worked well together, made some decisions that would cause one or the other’s career to falter, so the courts are left with trying to figure out how to solve this so that the one with the faltering career can get back on their feet after a divorce.  The money that is needed for this is often called “rehabilitative” alimony (or spousal support).  This is money that is given for a temporary period, expected to help the receiving spouse rehabilitate their career prospects after years away from the workforce.  It may include money for education, licensing, or to tide the receiving spouse over while working their way up the ladder at the office.  It may help with relocation expenses or finance a startup of a new business or company.  It almost always has a time limitation, and is usually between 1/3 to 1/2 of the length of the marriage, to be ended entirely if the former spouse remarries. 

To prepare for the new world of single-hood where the only alimony available will be temporary, or “rehabilitative”, a woman should do a little research.  The Courts want to help a receiving spouse get up to speed in her career, but do not intend to let her lounge around and procrastinate.  They will not accept it if you have remained naïve about finances and career issues once a divorce was imminent.  By the time you get to trial, you need a plan, because if you have not figured out what you need, they will possibly give you less than you need. 

Stay tuned to this blog for a post on how to prepare when you need to ask for alimony. 

Alimony: your friends are a bad substitute for a good lawyer

Your own perception of what you deserve in a divorce is likely skewed.  It is either higher than realistic, or lower, depending upon your own perception of yourself, your friend’s support, your understanding of what others got, and what you read in the news or online.  Do not rely upon any of these ways of finding out what is fair and what you might get in terms of alimony! 

To begin with, we have a growing problem in society of demanding that “friendship” means “blind support”.  In many groups, you get together for a chat with friends, and whoever of the friends has bad news expects the others to rally around with supportive contributions to the conversation.  “He’s a jerk”, or “good riddance to her”, are expected.  Group-thinking prevails, and any thought which disagrees with the main force of the group is suppressed.  "Support" is blindly re-defined to mean "agree with whatever the upset person wants to hear", and as long as everyone follows this social code, everyone will be happy.  So when you tell your pals about your financial situation, you expect them to be similarly supportive.  You expect any unsupportive persons who maybe telling you something different, will be run out of town on a rail.   Even if you want your friends to give you a realistic appraisal of your chances, you can expect them to be overly optimistic, in the mistaken belief that you need to keep a positive attitude. 

This kind of support can hurt you.  While it feels good, this kind of groupthink rarely reflects what is really going on the world.  Just because someone suffered through their own divorce and made a killing off of their ex, does not mean you will.  You need to meet with an attorney to get the real story.  And if one attorney does not agree with you, go ahead and get a second opinion.  Be careful to find a smart opinion, not just one that will agree with you.  If you get your advice from an attorney who has never seen this issue in court, and their advice is different from what every other attorney has told you, there may be a very good reason for that.  Look for an attorney who has handled this kind of issue before, successfully, and ask them for a realistic appraisal of whether you can win in your case.  One frequent refrain in family court is that family cases are like fingerprints in that no two are exactly alike.  Do not think that because your bests friend married for 15 years to an engineer with 3 kids got a bazillion in support, that you, also married to an engineer for 15 years and with 3 kids, will get the same.  Other factors could be at play here that could totally change your result.  You need to be prepared for this possibility. 

Let me give you an example of how your friends or family’s blind “support” can lead you astray:

I had a client who arrived on my doorstep with a horrifying situation.  After an annulled teen marriage and a brief first marriage right after college, both of which ended amicably, she spent 25 years with her second husband, sticking through thick and thin.  He was a lazy jerk, but she was embarrassed about picking so badly and having 2 divorces under her belt by the age of 25, so she was not going to have a third divorce!  Unfortunately, her husband took advantage of this.  He kept getting himself fired from one job after another, forcing her to work harder and harder if they were to make ends meet.  She would come home to a full slate of parenting duties, because he chose not to be engaged with the children.  She did the cooking, cleaning, took the kids to the doctor and everything.  All he did was play guitar and work out with weights in the basement.  About 15 years into the marriage, she started talking about divorce.  He had done some research online and talked to pals about it, and he felt he had positioned himself perfectly to be supported by her, for life.  So he told her this.  She sought advice from friends who were divorced, most of whom were stay-at-home mothers who really did do the work of staying at home.  These friends confirmed that a stay-at-home parent with 2 children would most certainly get alimony after a 15 year marriage.  Terrified and fully aware that she could not support two households, she remained until it became unbearable.

Luckily, her next move was to hire me.  Many people in her place would try to save themselves a few bucks by trying to do it for themselves.  especially after hearing from everyone they knew, that they would lose their argument in the divorce.  I explained that he and her friends were wrong.

While everyone was right about the courts trying to be less sexist about their decisions, his fantasy of what defines a “house-husband”, was mistaken.  He could NOT refuse to be a parent and ignore the kids so that they'd insist on leaving when their mother left, and then get child support.  He could NOT, as an able-bodied man, choose not to work just because he had a spouse who would pick up the slack while she was married to him, and expect that a judge would make her pay him to continue.  He had missed some essential elements to positioning himself for a good result.  He had assumed that there are "tricks" that he could exploit to bring him a result that was unfair to his ex and his kids, and allow him to continue to be lazy in life.  He was wrong.  

And bringing in 500 pages of automated applications to menial jobs, generated by sending his resume to Monster.com, followed up by nothing, would not change that.  He could NOT convince the judge that he had made a reasonable effort to become self-supporting. 

After I laid out the situation for the judge, the judge actually turned to him and said, “I hear Circle K is hiring”.   His attorney was embarrassed.  My client nearly fainted in relief.  He had spent years, online and learning about the purpose of alimony, intentionally positioning himself for becoming the winner of the “alimony lottery”, and having buddies pound him on the back in congratulations about what a brilliant strategist he was.  And he missed the simple guiding principle… that every adult needs to work at something, and if your joint choice of how to divide labor within the marriage makes it tough for you to get back up to speed in your own career choice, THEN … MAYBE… you will be supported until you can revamp your career.   

If you spend your time positioning yourself to look like a lazy bum, and you show up in court with that record… well, your friends, your internet research, and your own fantasies have steered you wrong.  There are legitimate "tips and tricks" out there, none of which are very "tricky", to help you position yourself in a divorce or separation.  For example, getting copies of all the financial documents and keeping them in a separate place, closing access to accounts for the purpose of keeping EITHER of you from spending all the spare cash and wasting it before separating, sitting down when you have both come to a conclusion that you can't stay together, and before you have decided to be evil to each other about it, and separating all the personal property and heirlooms, removing them and putting them in separate households so that you can't get evil and start having bonfires with each other's things once the amicable stage is over... those are great tips.  But trying to find a way to trick the system into giving you more than you deserve, letting you be an adult who does not pull their own weight... these are bad tricks and tips to take, and if your friends are urging you into doing that, they're wrong. 

Hollywood may have given us the wrong impression of what is appropriate... from "Odd Couple" and "First Wives' Club", where ex wives receive ample support to live on, no matter what the pre-divorce situation... to various shows where the main characters' separation is a side issue and we merely witness them being evil to each other by doing things like telling the children that the reason they can't afford this or that is that the support is too high, or not high enough... these are NOT the appropriate places to get our strategy.  Please, consult with a reputable lawyer, a mediator, an economist and/or a therapist, for legitimate help with your separation and divorce.  DO NOT rely upon Hollywood or your best pals for good tips and tricks!

Game plan to avoid being cheated

Consumer cautions for military personnel and other young adults:
                New military recruits graduate from childhood to adulthood quickly.  Before you have a chance to be an adult consumer in the civilian world, you are whisked away to participate in a war.  When you return, you have a pocket full of cash and lots of ideas on how to spend it, but no foundation in how to handle the sales team waiting for you to walk through their door.  A few suggestions:

                These people are not the enemy and they do not look like it.  They look like your best friend, your parents, or a former service buddy who has gone into the civilian life with some sales skills.  They may truly believe they are helping you, and may have no idea that they are asking you to sign a bad contact.  They target you, not because they dislike service members and want to trick you, but because they know you have cash in your hand.  They study you and know what you want and what you worry about.  Your lack of experience in handling cash is not the reason they target you, but it certainly makes their job easier.    

                They have studied their products and can teach you about them.  They know the things that you could not have found out about during your internet search… they take pride in helping you, and before you know it, you know whether they are married or not, whether they were ever in the service, and which branch.  You will know about their kids and what school they went to.  Anything they have in common with you, you will hear about.  The danger is that this will relax you and make you more likely to buy from this person, whether or not this person has the best deal available for you.  You will believe this person when they talk to you about loans and leases, warranties and whether or not you should get your own mechanic to check the used car out after their dealership has already done its special evaluation (which always has some special name that makes it sound like it must be the most perfect evaluation in history). 

                Remember, they have studied people like you, which is why you like them and trust them.  But they also know their product.  They know whether this car seizes when it goes over 50 miles per hour, so that they will encourage you to test drive it only on local roads where the speed limit is 45.  They know that you are interested in saving money and will find it easy to avoid spending extra cash on a mechanic to look at the car or a lawyer to review the contract for purchase.  They play on this.  After all, you are a big man who understands engines.  You have pulled a whole tank apart in the desert and put it back together in less than an hour.  You can certainly do your own evaluation of the car.  You don’t need your Dad or your wife to help, or approve. 

This is how they use your pride against you.  To convince you that you do not need a friend’s opinion, an inspection, a mechanic to look at it, a lawyer to review the contract.  Don’t let them do it to you.  Use your pride to follow a plan.  Here is the plan:

1.       Go online to research your purchase.  Find out prices, the plusses and minuses, the consumer report on it.  If it’s a car, look at the Kelley Blue Book value.  If it’s a house, look at Zillow and Trulia.

2.       Know how much you can afford.  Don’t just take some realtor’s recommendation that you “can” afford something.  Look at how much you want to spend on it and find out how much that would be if you got a loan with that type of payment.  In calculating your costs, put in costs of repair, alterations, maintenance, licensing, insurance, and taxes.  Get pre-approved if you can, even for a car loan.  It’s better to take a more conservative approach and let the dealer beat the deal you have in your hand if they can, than to let the dealer do it for you and have a nasty surprise because you did not know all the details.

3.       Go shopping.  Personally look at the purchase.  No falling in love with a house on the MLS or a car on Cars.com or a sofa on craig’s list is allowed.   Personally walk through it, test drive it, sit on it.  Turn it upside down and check it out.  Don’t get dazzled by the paint job, look at it’s bones.  Appearances will tell you if it was well taken care of, but be careful of reading much more into a clean seat.

4.       Get a professional inspection.  You will probably have to pay for this.  A home inspection, a termite inspection, a mechanic’s inspection.  All are very valuable.  If someone suggests that you should not get an inspection, be suspicious of their motives.  Nothing, not even a rush to get the deal done, is worth missing this step.  And no, you cannot just do the deal and rely upon getting it inspected later.  Undoing a bad deal is usually impossible, and in the few situations where it is possible, it is very, very difficult.

5.       Arrange for a warranty.   Now is the time to start to finalize things, but do not finalize until you finish with step 6!

6.       Bring the contracts to a lawyer for review.  This includes the contract for the loan as well as the contract for the sale.  More than one person has been surprised by bad loan terms they did not understand.  The lawyer can either help you re-negotiate the contract, or can inform you of the meaning of the various clauses.

Follow this plan that you are less likely to get cheated.  Less vulnerable to people who would use your pride against you.

               

Fixing the Picker: Part IV, Physical attraction

Looks may be the first thing we notice about a person we are dating, but it needs to be last on the list of how to pick someone for a lasting relationship.  Looks change as people age.  We gain weight.  We lose weight.  We lose hair and go grey.  We get busy at work and can't get to the gym as often, or out in the sun to get a tan.  We develop allergies to various beauty products or develop higher priorities than beauty.  We get sick and end up with lasting scars after recovery.  We lose breasts to cancer and tight skin to pregnancies.  We start limping after a sports injury or get a scar from a accident.  We get wrinkles after years of sun exposure.  A life, well lived, starts to show up.  Changing looks are part of adding experience and improving in other ways.  For these, and many other reasons, the attractiveness of our potential mate needs to be the last priority. 

One of the important "other" reasons, is that when we are focused on a person's looks, we become blind to the more important things.  If we feel the pull of physical chemistry, we start trying to make excuses for the other things that should be red flags to us.      

Remember, certain assets that are considered attractive simply do not occur in nature, as often as they appear at the country club.  The hot redhead likely spends a significant amount of time in the beauty salon and the man who has kept his quarterback's physique well after his college football days were over, likely spends a significant amount of time at the gym.  Enhanced breasts, lipo, cute little upturned button noses, collagen and botox come with a price... and you will have to live with this price... your loved one will be in surgery and/or recovery for a few weeks a year. Super muscles and super performance at the gym also comes with a price, and anyone who tries to tell you that their steriods do not affect their psychological make-up is simply wrong.

Even supposedly healthy habits come at a price.  Many vegans find that their hair starts to thin.   

Be sure you're willing to live with the price... the side effects of the things you pick.

I know women who are very physically attracted to the macho, gym rat look, and they enjoy the manner of an arrogant man.  They choose based upon this look, and regularly find that they have picked a job hopper who treats waitresses like dirt and is estranged from their family.  They are surprised at repeatedly finding themselves in relationships with poverty-striken but attractive men who are jerks behind closed doors. One such woman friend of mine has decided not to date at all, rather than find herself with another man who keeps losing jobs because he prioritizes his gym time over work. 

I have clients and friends who repeatedly pick barbie princesses.  they like the look and love it if she needs a big, strong man to rescue her from the messes she's gotten int.  In one situation, a friend of mine who was about 50 met a woman in her 40s who had "kept herself up".  He was blind to her faults.  

At age 45, every one of her ex boyfriends and husbands had fatal flaws such as... one was physically abusive, another was gay, another had herpes, another was a cheater, another was bankrupt, another was a criminal who lied about it, another was a drunkard, another was a stalker ... and on & on.

          She was a cutie. She had taken her inheritance from her Dad's estate and enhanced her breasts, smoothed her stomach, turned her thighs into little sticks, bleached her hair nearly white. She was quite the bombshell.  She represented herself as being an “engineer”, and because we were a social group, no one really bothered to check up on this.  One party, she met my husband.  She wanted to charm him with how wonderful she is.  I am very lucky that he likes me better, so he was not interested in the cutesy little flirting things she was probably trying.  But he is an engineer, so he tried to engage her in a conversation one evening about their common type of work, what kind of engineer was she, what type of work, etc… and it turned out that she was a receptionist in an construction firm whose bosses often told her that she had learned a lot about their business, and that she should finish her college education and consider becoming an engineer.  They occasionally trusted her to give answers on minor issues to clients.  But her college career consisted of having attempted community college several times but never finishing any of her coursework and actually getting credit.  My husband, who was able to put aside her looks, had found one of her flaws that would have been fatal to a relationship with him, in the space of one 10 minute conversation. 
          If only another one of our friends had been able to do so.  Superficially, she was cute, had a great career, and a dating history that deserved being rescued from.  There was not a man she had ever dated within the group, who didn't have to leave the group in embarassment or anger, after being faced with the barrage of nasty gossip that she would start about them after a breakup.  This was a group of adults who had known each other for decades, and who frequently dated and broke up over the years, learning to lie with each other in peace if the relationships ended.  But never when one of HER relationships ended.   She worked hard to develop an aura of a woman who was repeatedly approached and loved by men who were all seriously flawed, and it couldn't possibly have been her fault because every one of their flaws were different from each other.  She was the perfect damsel in distress.

This friend who should have known better, started flirting with her at one party after one of her breakups.  He was sure he could do better than her previous boyfriend, who had turned out to be a stalker (or so she said).  He had a good job and a good work ethic, and he was able to maintain a reasonable distance until the time when the relationship deserved more.  A group of our friends took him aside and reminded him of her issues, but he ignored it because she was so cute and he was sure that, armed with information about her issues, he could avoid them or work around them.  My friend went ahead and dated her.   When they broke up, her story about him was that he was entirely incapable of performing in bed, that she had suggested Viagra and any number of solutions, and he refused. Poor guy. He stuck around the gang ONLY because he had dated other members of the group knew this woman’s story to be a lie.  

He has, happily, adjusted his picker, and I’ve not heard of him dating women who were superficially attractive while having serious flaws that prevented a good long term match.  Having learned his lesson, he looks at a woman's history before and moral fiber before he checks out their looks.  Which is the smart way to do it. 

Fixing the Picker: Part III. Money

Most divorces arise from serious disagreements about money:  How to handle it, how to save and spend, how to get it, and who has the power or control over it.  Whenever I see a statistic about what causes people to break up, THINGS and MONEY are always the number one issue.  He can’t keep a job.  She spends every dime that comes into the house.  He wastes the joint money on golf, a boat, or some other habit he insists on maintaining.  She overspends on the kids, claiming a right to do so because “it’s all about the CHILDREN”, despite that it will put them into bankruptcy.  She refuses to work despite that he says they can’t afford a stay-at-home parent.  They spend themselves into bankruptcy.  He doles out money to her like a parent giving allowance to a kid.  She maintains her salary in a separate account for herself (after advice from others that a woman always needs “her own” money), while thinking of HIS salary as jointly owned.  He sends money to his parents to help them out in their old age, despite that she says they can’t afford to do so.  She is jealous of the alimony or child support that he owes to previous relationships and wants him to run to court and find ways to reduce it.  They invest in a business, throw all their money into it, and then can’t agree on some details of how to save it when it fails, and blame each other for losing their nestegg.  Every one of these situations comes from a divorce I handled, and I could simply keep going.  The point is that every person has their own issues, and every couple develops their own ways of handling the joint issues.  And many times, these issues and the couple's ways of handling the issues can create problems.

          However it comes around, money is a huge issue in many marriages, and is the catalyst for most breakups. 

          Given this information, it makes sense to have long discussions about money before you marry.  If your officiant does not require pre-marital counseling that has a component about finances, you should do it on your own.  And even if you do get a premarital counseling on finance, you should work harder on this issue than your counselor requires. 

          After years of being a divorce attorney, I decided to avoid this for my future relationships.  When we were dating, I decided to explore the whole situation before we went further.  Use my choices as a guide in doing it, yourself:  I provided information to my (now) husband about my finances, my office and business, my retirement savings, my income and my tax liabilities.  He knew the value of my house, my car, and the loans on them.  He knew about every credit account I had.  I asked for his information.  I got him to let me browse through his copy of his divorce file along with all the financial disclosures from it.  I checked to make sure he had fully paid his divorce lawyer from his previous marriage.  I knew his child support situation and his retirement savings situation.  I looked (with permission) at the credit bureau report that he had from the purchase of his post-divorce house.  I offered for him to get a credit bureau report on me. 

          We talked about our future plans, about our business plans, our retirement plans, our careers, our plans for financing our lives.  We talked about the fact that neither of us were from rich families and were not living off of trust funds.  We talked about whether either of us would have ongoing obligations to our parents as they aged and how we planned to handle the moral obligations without ruining ourselves financially.  We talked about the same issues in regard to his kids and their college expectations.  We looked at each other’s career paths, and discussed the mistakes we and each other had made. 

          Even with all this talk, there were surprises.  We did not anticipate the economic downturn and the resulting affect it had on our real estate and retirement accounts.  We did not anticipate the job situation that required us to move around the country.  But the fact that we had discussed all these other pieces of the puzzle ahead of time made it possible, when the country’s financial crisis arose, for us to trust each other in discussing how to resolve our personal issues within the country’s crisis. 

          The older you are, the more of a track record you have in issues involving things and money.  Look at how someone chooses to spend thier money.  Are they living high on a small budget and using credit to do so, or are they pinching pennies with a million dollars in the bank?  Are you overspending your income and hoping a partnership with someone will help solve your credit issues?  Does your proposed partner know that you expect them to solve your money issues? 

           If you and your partner are young, it’s difficult to ascertain what your partner’s attitudes might be, but even if both of you are financial babies (very new to understanding financial issues), you can figure out if you have similar hopes and dreams, and whether you have a smart plan for making those things happen.  You know whether each other has bought all the toys you can afford or whether you are trying to develop a habit of working and saving for a rainy day.  And recognize that it will take work to grow together in these issues. 

           If you and your partner are older, you can look at your partner’s track record and figure some of this out.  Expect that you will not change someone else’s basic attitudes about money.  Expect that you will have to negotiate and grow together on this issue.  Expect that from time to time, even people who agree on everything will encounter surprises or have to negotiate.  But you cannot ignore it. 

Fixing the Picker: Part II. History

When looking for a new mate, pay attention to their history. 

If they are older than 22, they have been an adult in the real world long enough to develop work habits and thrift habits.  They have had a relationship or two.  They have personal habits and goals.  While it is possible to change and improve ourselves over time, lasting improvement is rarely motivated by outside sources.  Look for someone whose historical interests, attitudes, and habits are consistent with your needs.  There are many clues available in a person's history. 

If they are not yet self-supporting, are they respectful of their supporters and seeking the opportunities that are available to start becoming self supporting? If they are self supporting, is it at a level and with a realistic ambition to move ahead? If they are older than their mid-20s, have they been a job hopper? a corporate climber? a "work until I have a little savings then cause issues and stop working until I'm desparate" type? Are they reaching for a pie in the sky without foundation (the rap artists who have never taken a course in music, music production, english, poetry, artistic management, or financial planning, for example)? Are they barely graduated from high school, yet aspiring to be a doctor or lawyer or engineer? Did they work through summers in college or did they sleep till noon and play computer games all day?

Is their age similar enough to yours that you will be going through the same life stages at the same time, or are they going to want babies at the time you need to be planning retirment (or visa versa)? Are they going to be wanting to travel at the same time you need to decide which nursing home to enter? Are they going to be putting their kids through college at the same time as you're wanting to be finish your own education?  Will they be ending a career while you are just beginning? 

If you met them online, do they spend their lives online? If you met them at a party or bar, are they consumed with partying or bar-hopping? Do they have interests outside the one that brought you together?

Is their energy level exhausting? Do they need rescuing? From themselves or from a situation they chose to get into?

Even if their history is really a non-history, it might have meaning!  Have they managed to get to a ripe, old age without ever making a commitment?  Two examples:

First:  A friend who got to the age of 40-something, without ever being engaged, or even owning his own home.  He had a good job but never stayed in the same company for longer than 5 years, always upwardly mobile, but never in the same location.  He had a good income.  He was interested in women, but not interested in commitment.  When he finally got married, he didn't consider anything about his bride other than that she was cute, the sex was good, and they had lots of fun.  And, as all his friends said, “it’s about time.”  It ended in a few years, after it stopped being so fun.  He is simply not a person who wants a commitment in his life, he wants excitement and change, and he probably should not have listened to his friends. Someday when we’re all in a nursing home, he will be the happy old dude who dates every reasonably healthy woman on his floor and flirts with all the staff. 

Second:  another friend got to the age of 40-something, without having gone through with a wedding (2 broken engagements), never even gommitting to buying a house until he was about 45 years old.  He did have a job, but it was something he drifted into, having gotten there by default after college and never leaving.  He made his way up the ranks because of how long he had been there, and was comfortable with it.  He liked his life.  Go to work, go home, get online and read.  For exercise, he would take long, relaxing walks.  Alone.  His life was perfect and he wanted to share it with a woman, but had waited for so long and rejected so many opportunities, that he felt he deserved a perfect woman to join his perfect life.  He felt he had zero baggage, so she should not have any, either.  The fact that he lived in complacency and preferred isolation so long, spending 40 years without ever making a commitment or changing anything about his life, became his baggage.  He did not recognize it.  He remains single in his mid-50s, and is considering joining a monastery as a second career.  It will make him happy.  His need for solitude, peace and perfection tends to preclude joining as a partner with any other person.  

Moving on with various issues in a person’s history.  The older a person gets, the more you can see their history on their faces.  Do they have telltale signs of a history of hard partying, smoking, over-sunning? If they have stopped these habits, are you willing to live with someone who is suffering from hepetitis, lung cancer, and skin cancer treatments? Or is it a history of over-eating and joint problems? Or a history of anorexia/bulemia and heart/energy problems? In your 20s, you won't see the results, you'll only see the bad habits... but the older you get, the more likely you'll see the results in their faces. Sallow, yellow or gray skin... yellowing teeth, distended stomachs (fatty liver), saggy skin, hearing problems... all battle scars from a youth misspent (or well-lived), but all likely to create lasting baggage. Just know WHICH baggage you're willing to live with.

Do they have a pack of kids already who are hard to support, and promising you that they want to start a NEW pack with you? Are their family, career, financial plans realistic?

Do you see, ANYWHERE on this list, anything about loving thier looks?  That is last because it will change as we age.  It changes based upon what we do now.  Some, particularly bad, looks are a function of bad choices in youth, as previously discussed.  Some looks are correlated to time spent in the salon or gym.  Some are all about the choice to eat excessively or an obsession with not eating at all.  Either choice will have an affect on looks, some good, some bad, but not all will be things we want to live with.
The history that we are building will change our looks, so when we make physical appearance a first priority in a relationship, we are guaranteeing short relationships, as our looks change.  A friend of mine is a perfect example.  She loved men with long hair.  As we became adults, she kept picking men with long hair.  Unfortunately, the responsible professionals tended to have to cut thier hair, at least whlie they were building their professional reputations, so she would fall out of love when they cut their hair, or she wouldn't choose a man with short hair to begin with.  Her relationships were limited as a result.  She would ignore a spotty job history, a volitile "artistic" temperament, a little recreational drug use, if he had the look that she liked.  It took her decades to change this thought process.  Very difficult, frustrating decades for her, as relationship after relatioship failed. 
When we start with looks, we become blind to the rest.  We make excuses for the bad stuff that came with the person who had the right looks, and we hope that their bad relationship history will not repeat itself.  We are usually out of luck on this issue, when we start with looking for the "look".  Stay tuned for Fixing the Picker, Parts III and IV, where we will finally address Money and Physical attraction!  

Fixing the picker: Part I How they treat others

When looking for a mate,

Look at how they treat their parents. This is how they will treat you when you are old and/or sick.

Look at how they treat waiters, waitresses and salespeople at stores. This is how they will treat you when you are waiting on them or doing chores for them.

Look at how they treat their ex. This is how they will treat you when they are angry at you.

Look at how they treat/train their animals. This is how they will treat/train their children. If you have fundamental differences in approach, you might want to consider how you will reconcile your differences.

Where is my question asking what they look like and whether they surround themselves with attractive people?  NOWHERE.  The reason is that issues of looks and physical attraction are the least of the things we should be looking at.  Looks and physical attraction are EASY to find.  All you need are eyes.  Any group of a thousand people… a good 300 of them will be physically attractive to you (and a different 300 of them will be physically attractive to someone else.  That part is about chemistry, and regarding chemistry, there is someone for everyone out there). 

But if you start with the good looking group, and then try to figure out which of them has a good enough character to continue to work with, it’s tough.  You will be blinded by the cute-ness.  You will try to find excuses for bad behavior.

If you start with the group of people who have good behavior… let’s say, 100 of those thousand whose behaviors match your needs, and then stand THAT ONE HUNDRED GOOD PEOPLE, all in front of you.  And then check to see whether they match your needs for financial issues, history issues, age issues, career and family plans.  You might end up with a good 10 people out of that thousand, standing in front of you.  But those 10 people will all be emotionally compatible with you.  Statistically, 3 of them will likely have the physical appearance/chemistry that you want.  THOSE THREE are the needles in the haystack that you are looking for.  You can choose to date any of those three, and not find yourself having to make excuses for them, trying to change them, or hoping that you will be able to get over your aversion to their issues.  

START with the character issues, and the lifestyle issues.  And then move on to the looks.  Not the other way around. 

Realistically, we can’t do this.  Because we decide who to ask out by whether they attract us when we see them.  BUT, consider making one adjustment to the order in which you do things.  Ask out someone who is cute, maybe, but do not CONTINUE to date them until they meet some of your other requirements.  Don’t make excuses for someone whose treatment of their family offends you, whose treatment of waitresses embarrasses you, whose treatment of their ex worries you.  No matter how cute they are, if they treat these people in a way that you would not, if they treat these people in a way that you are uncomfortable, terminate the relationship.  It is not worth continuing.  Someone else will be good for you.  Someone else will be good for them. 

PAY ATTENTION to your picker!

And stay tuned for Fixing the picker Part II, History.  Part III, Money and things, and Part IV, Looks.