If there is a phrase I HATE in family law – along with calling a woman a golddigger – it’s a man referencing being taken to the cleaners. It’s rooted in such, deep, toxic internalized misogyny that it’s hard for me to believe anyone really believes it, but – then again – the world has a way of surprising me sometimes.
Men… well, they believe it.
The thing about it that really gets me is that there’s no divorce anywhere that divides up the assets a man (or a woman) is entitled to separately. So, things like the amount of money he had saved before marriage, real estate purchased before marriage, businesses bought or invested in before marriage, retirement contributions made before marriage, trust funds, and inheritances are not divided. That’s separate property and, though other states might have other ways of classifying and dividing marital assets, I’m pretty sure none take separate, premarital property and divide them in the divorce.
No, what is divided in a divorce are the assets that were earned, purchased, or acquired DURING the marriage. So, retirement contributed DURING the marriage. Money deposited from a job worked DURING the marriage. Real estate that was paid for using money earned during the marriage.
When it comes to marital property, we’re mostly looking at where the money came from – was it earned or somehow acquired during the marriage (with the exception, of course, of things like trust funds, inheritances, personal injury settlements, etc.)? If so, then it is marital and subject to division. It’s not separate because it was earned only by one party – like money earned by the husband at his job – or because it is titled or deeded in only one spouse’s name – like a house that has only the husband’s name on the deed.
It’s about the origin of the money. Does it come from the marriage, by virtue of the efforts of the parties themselves? Then it’s marital. If not, it’s likely separate.
What happens in a divorce is that we put all the marital assets together into a pot and we divide those, usually somewhere close to 50/50 – though not necessarily exactly 50/50. Virginia is an equitable distribution state which means that we can take the negative and positive monetary and nonmonetary contributions of each party to the marriage and, theoretically at least, determine how much each party is entitled to receive. Lesser shares are possible though, in my experience at least, they are extremely rare.
A negative nonmonetary contribution – like an affair – could mean that someone receives a lesser share. A negative monetary contribution – like a drug or alcohol addiction – could also mean that someone receives a lesser share. It’s not common that a court would award something other than 50/50, but the possibility, at least, is there in the statute. Positive contributions – nonmonetary and monetary – help, too, including the weight of the unpaid caregiving and domestic labor that you’re doing (nonmonetary) and the amount of income that you earn (monetary).
When a man says that his wife has taken him to the cleaners, he doesn’t mean that she took his separate property that he was separately entitled to. No, that’s already protected under the law. What he means is that, of the MARITAL property, he thinks she got too much. He thinks that because he earned it or something that he somehow has a superior claim. He doesn’t look at his wife – or his soon to be ex-wife – and think of her as an equal in their partnership. He thinks that her claim, whether because she earned less or brought less to the table, to the assets that were earned during the marriage is somehow less than his.
Ultimately, from a legal point of view, it doesn’t come down to who earned the most in a financial sense; both the husband and the wife are viewed as partners under the law and the marital assets (and liabilities!) are subject to division in the divorce. He, despite what he may think, does not have a superior claim just because “he” earned more money during the marriage.
It comes down to support, too – both child support and spousal support, right? In general, I find that men hate ongoing support obligations to their ex-wives, but, hey, sometimes that’s what is fair and equitable under the circumstances, especially if she was a stay at home mom or otherwise earned less in order to care for the family and home.
Neither spousal support nor child support are particularly generous and, in the case of spousal support, there are more and more restrictions introduced all the time. These days, spousal support normally terminates after a period of years or the payor party’s retirement; employment experts and others are used to demonstrate that even a disabled or stay at home spouse has at least some earning potential.
When a man says his wife took him to the cleaners, it probably mostly means that she got a truly fair result! There’s really no such thing, because the statement implies that she got everything – which wouldn’t happen unless, for whatever reason, he agreed to give her more than 50% – or that she got something that she had no interest in – which also wouldn’t happen, because we already separate out the truly separate property from the divorce.
Anything that you get in your divorce is because you have an entitlement to it. That’s not taking someone to the cleaners. That, my friend, is equity.