The Price of Guilt v. Need

DOMESTIC RELATIONS

Alimony, says Miami Circuit Judge Thomas Lee Jr., "is like trying to take one blanket and stretch it over two beds." It is also one of the main legal skirmish lines in the battle of the sexes. "It's not fair to me or the two children," says Linda Sue Beasley, 24, an attractive Indianapolis, Ohio, divorcee who receives $30 a month. "Hell, I should know," says a Los Angeles stockbroker. "I've been through three divorces and didn't get one fair shake."

Amid such bitterness, a determined band of critics has been agitating for alimony reform. In a new book, Divorce and Custody for Men, once-divorced Author Charles Metz argues that alimony should be abolished completely. Anti-alimony demonstrations have been organized outside Manhattan's alimony prison. The National Organization of Women (NOW), will consider a motion at its next meeting deploring alimony as a reinforcement of women's lower status.* And a recent survey of the predominantly female readers of Good Housekeeping turned up the surprising fact that 92.5% of the 1,000 people polled thought a change was needed.

Human Factors. Among lawyers and judges, alimony abolishment is considered obviously too drastic. But there is widespread agreement on one major reform: replacing guilt by need as the operative factor in determining how much an ex-wife should receive.

Standard practice allows the judge to decide what the alimony and child support will be unless, as is often the case, the couple have agreed on a settlement. Generally, alimony will continue until the wife dies or remarries, while the responsibility of child support goes on until the child comes of age. Within these broad limits, however, the judge has enormous discretion. Says William MacFaden, presiding judge of the family courts in Los Angeles County, "Many human factors must be taken into consideration when setting the amount."

A major factor in many states, either by statute or practice, is fault. Knowing this, lawyers for both husband and wife commonly dig up and expose the most sordid details of the opponent's private life, to try to prove one party "guiltier" than the other. A man shown to have been having an affair is often "punished" by a judge's harsh alimony award, whether or not his ex-wife has plenty of money of her own. Conversely, an adulteress may get nothing, even though her resources are nil.

Dirty Linen. But attitudes toward extramarital sex have changed, and the depths to which lawyers will go to discredit an opponent's client have become increasingly distasteful. Most important of all has been the growing obviousness of the inequities that were being wrought. Says New York Judge Samuel Hofstadter: "Many deserving women get too little, and others less deserving get too much." To him, guilt is a clearly outmoded concept in divorce. Besides, he points out, "in probably 90% of all cases, neither spouse is at fault, or both may be to some degree."

As a result of similar conclusions, more and more judges are reaching decisions on the basis of need and ability to pay. Says Chicago Divorce Lawyer Russell Bundesen: "The controlling factors now are how much the husband earns, what his assets are, and what assets his wife has." In fact, in states like Florida, where the law forbids payment of alimony to a woman who has been divorced on grounds of her adultery, judges often overlook perfectly well-documented adultery charges and grant the divorce for extreme cruelty so that alimony may be assigned to a woman who needs it. When the dirty linen starts to be aired, says Miami Judge Lawrence King, "I just click my mind off and don't even listen to their arguments." Agrees his local colleague, Judge Lee: "I try to make them understand that there is no reason to try to convince me of what an S.O.B. their mate is. How bad the man may have been has absolutely nothing to do with the money allocation."

* In 18 states, however, there are statutes permitting husbands to collect alimony in appropriate circumstances.

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