…and why it’s nothing to be proud of.
I would like to praise Liz Hodgkinson for her article in the Daily Mail today entitled ‘We Fought for Equality. So Why Do Greedy Wives Still Sponge Off Their Ex-Husbands?’
It’s a question I’ve often wondered about, in spite of my own experiences. You see, when my father left my mother back in 1995, with three children to support and a mortgage to pay, he withdrew every single penny from the family savings, meaning my mother could not pay our mortgage, meaning we eventually had to move into corporation housing.
Not content with this level of douche-baggery, he dropped completely out of sight, and changed his name to avoid paying child-support. My mother never saw a penny of support from him because no-one could pin him down – he moved like quicksilver.
Now you would have thought seeing my own mother struggle for years, I would be up on my chair, screaming ‘YOU GO GIRL’ every time someone screwed a huge settlement out of their ex-husband.
Wrong.
I think it’s disgusting. Because I’m a sensible human being who realises no other man has to be punished for my father’s behaviour. Whats more, I feel that there is a significant moral degradation present in anyone who takes more than what they are actually entitled to. I’m talking about those ‘I’m entitled to a percentage of your future earnings FOREVER AND EVER’ women.
That’s right – forever and ever. Even if you had nothing to do with setting up his successful business enterprise. Even if you didn’t work a goddamn day to help him make that money for 25 years.
You are entitled to earn off his future earnings. Even if you are no longer together? Even if you don’t have children?
How can those women look at themselves in the mirror in the morning? What’s more how is this possible by law?
I told my own husband just the other evening during a debate on this very issue:
‘Even if there was a point where I hated you so much that I could barely bear to look at you, if I took more than I’d put in, more than was actually mine, I would consider that I had failed as a human being.
And how on earth could I justify grabbing at your future earnings? In that situation, if I didn’t want you, I wouldn’t want your money either.’
And I mean it.
‘These men are just giving us what they owe us – you take what you can get’. Oh do me a favour – is this equality we’re talking about?
Because it seems like damned greed to me.
And it’s nothing to be proud of.
Here is Liz Hodgkinson’s article in full. It’s worth a read. Here is an archived copy of the page.
