The latest ruling on divorce poses yet another terrifying threat both to the institution of marriage and to the status of women, and therefore doubly cries out for legislative redress.
First, there is no reason why an intelligent and well-educated woman (or anyone else, for that matter), having spent years bringing up children, should thereafter be considered incapable of any employment whatever, and thus require to be maintained by her ex-husband. There should be a statutory maximum of, say, three years for retraining, after which she should be expected to find a job like everyone else. Whether it is the sort of job for which she was qualified before having children is neither here nor there.
Secondly, any spouse petitioning for divorce without alleging fault (which would then have to be proved in court, with prosecutions for perjury if false statements were made) should thus forgo any entitlement to any part of the other spouse's estate, and in no circumstance should any asset (including the marital home) already held by either spouse before the marriage be subject to any claim by the other spouse.
And thirdly, no former spouse without dependent children should be entitled to maintenance for longer than the marriage itself lasted, nor should any former spouse with dependent children be so entitled in his or her own right rather than in right of those children.
While working as homemakers, did these women not eat? Did they go about naked? Did they sleep in the street? Surely, they have already had their share? Every man, every woman of good will, everyone who believes in the institution of marriage, everyone who believes that women are intellectually equal to men: withold your vote from any parliamentary candidate who does not undertake to support the above reforms.
But, above all, marriage should be made much more difficult to enter into in the first place.
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