–JOAN LUNDEN, cohost, “Good Morning America”
What triggered Lunden’s verbal Scud was an order from a New York court telling her to pay Krauss $18,000 a month in “temporary maintenance” (a.k.a. alimony). She’s also covering all the fixed costs on the family home where he, but not she, continues to live. Lunden reportedly makes around $2 million annually; Krauss, says his lawyer Norman Sheresky, is not currently earning a paycheck.
Today the Joan Lundens, tomorrow any women who earn good wages. “It’s been difficult to find men in a category of need who will accept maintenance from wives, or a lawyer who will ask for it,” says Louis Filczer, president of the American Divorce Association of Men in Arlington Heights, Ill. “But ever since the Lunden case hit the press, we’ve seen a different attitude.” Payments by wives are actually a “hopeful trend,” says New York appellate attorney Myrna Felder, “because it means that women are doing better financially.” When they support husbands they’re equally liable for man-tenance.
But to thrice-divorced novelist Erica Jong, the Lunden case mocks true equality. “We don’t yet have a level playing field,” she protests. “Women who earn big sums tend to be in entertainment and the arts, where your paycheck often depends on your youth and looks. We lose our earning power earlier than men, so we shouldn’t be required to pay the same.” Shelby White, author of “What Every Woman Should Know About Her Husband’s Money” (262 pages. Turtle Bay Books. $22), thinks that alimony should compensate spouses who stay home and don’t develop earning power-a standard that few men can meet.
So what’s really just? Today’s divorce laws attempt to impose evenhanded rules on the battle of the exes. But as a new generation of feminists sees it, “equality” means that women lose. Here’s how matters stand at the Great Divide:
Fathers are pursuing more child-custody cases because they’re racking up more wins, says matrimonial attorney Marshall Wolf of the Cleveland law firm Wolf & Akers. The vast majority of children still go with their mothers, by family choice. But when men fight, studies show them prevailing from 40 to 70 percent of the time. Courts usually award custody based on the “best interest of the child,” a chancy rule that relies on the judgment of social workers or psychologists. For more predictable outcomes, West Virginia now gives preference to the “primary caretaker,” usually (but not always) the mother. Several states encourage parents to share physical custody of the child-but hostile couples can’t make that work.
Depending on the judge, a father’s chances are best if he earns substantially more than the mother; if he takes a new wife who’ll stay home with the kids (mothers are apparently fungible); if he handled part or most of the parenting; if the children are older; if the mother has a paying job; or, if she violates a norm, by taking a lover or admitting she’s gay. About 1.4 million one-parent families are headed by dads, more than double the number in 1980.
The number of women tapped for child support is rising rapidly. Even so, they pay less on average than fathers do-including mothers who earn similar incomes, according to Kathryn Rettig of the University of Minnesota. This isn’t as discriminatory as it sounds. Mothers are more likely than fathers to lose the use of the family home and less likely to get an equal share of the property. Rettig found that dads without custody of children took 47 percent of the assets, versus 28 percent for mothers. So even with smaller child-support payments, wives may get less.
Women who earn paychecks may be thought, by some judges, to be less devoted to their children-a burden that working fathers don’t bear. Here’s how Kentucky put it, in a recent study of gender bias in state courts: in custody cases, “women who work outside the home are penalized for not being more available to their children [while working men] are praised for being a dedicated father if they provide any kind of child care assistance at all.” Men face courtroom bias, too-most commonly, a belief that they lack the emotional resources to nurture small children.
Women with lower earnings than men suffer more economically in divorce, as do the children when they’re in their mother’s care, Under today’s “equal treatment” standard, even mothers with custody get less property than before. Not surprisingly, however, property follows earnings. The more women earn, the more they get when they divorce.
Women, like men, have to part with a share of any business they own. Typically a spouse gives cash rather than stock to keep the ex from crashing the boardroom. Men who work for their wives are good candidates for temporary alimony while they search for another job.
For either sex, alimony is rare. Only 15 percent of women get it and today most awards are temporary. Men collect only when their wives earn markedly more.
In most community-property states, the assets of the, marriage are normally divided in half. Elsewhere, the shares may turn on each spouse’s contribution to the marriage, professionally or in the home. Wealthy actress Linda Lavin might have owed her low-earning husband plenty-but she paid just a fraction of his claim after proving in court that he slept with other women and damaged her professional relationships. “I could have just written him a check,” she said, “but propertied women need to fight for themselves.”
A decade ago the feminist fight was for equal treatment in divorce. But as it turned out, gender-neutral rules often work against the weaker spouse. Reformers today, argues Columbia Law School professor Martha Albertson Fineman, should focus on ways of leaving spouses with roughly equal standards of living. Given women’s rising earnings, men should find this their fight, too.
