Abused spouse has to pay spousal support

[JesusFightClub]

Meda, I am so happy you are in a better place now!

The woman I know is the strongest person I can imagine and she told me she ran from the house finally in fear of her life. She ran not knowing where to go. It was a very sad story.

Other women told me "I went to the police/I went to my parents/I hid". It is horrible. I never expected so many. I can't think how many people didn't die like my friend.

Someone once told me "She was beaten for ten months before she died. I was beaten for ten years."

...I ran out of words for that.

[annalena]

WTF. MEN don't beat women. Jackasses do. Men don't have to prove to themselves that they can be stronger than a physically weaker one.

[2xx1xy1JD]

Laws vary wildly by country/state/province on this issue. Please don't take anything in this post as a substitute for proper legal advice.

Where I am (Ontario, Canada), this is absolutely possible.

The general rule is that "conduct" of the spouse CANNOT be considered, unless it is relevant to the economic status of the parties.

Many times, this benefits women. It means that support cannot be denied just because a wife cheated, for example. The law in Ontario also says that the property needs to be split, unless it would be "unconscionable" to do so. Again, the mere fact that there was cheating, or that one spouse paid most of the bills, doesn't make it unconscionable. Traditionally, taking conduct out of consideration helped women, who were often the ones who had less property in their names and who tended to earn less.

That said, we do see cases where the wife is the one with the job, and the abusive ex is an addict, or mentally ill, or simply incapable of holding down a job. I've also seen cases where the wife had come to Canada on a work visa (often as a nanny), and later sponsor her husband when she qualified for permanent residency. As part of the sponsorship, she would have had to guarantee that he would not go on welfare and that she would support him for a set period of time. These women often have better English, better education and better work skills than their husbands. The husbands are used to playing a supportive role to the breadwinner wife (like taking care of the kids for years), but they can also have an entitlement complex and get jealous and controlling, and sometimes violent.

[Alecto]

When I was a stepmother, I belonged to a stepmother support board, and the number of custodial fathers paying alimony to non-custodial mothers who had convictions of child and/or spousal abuse was staggering. I've seen two occasions where the mother was ordered to not pay child support, while the father was ordered to pay in excess of $2000/mo in alimony.

I don't think it's a good old boys club as much as the family court system is so severely broken.

[2xx1xy1JD]

There's a policy choice to be made. Conduct of a spouse is either relevant, or it's not. There are consequences either way.

The same holds true for custody proceedings. If you say that the ONLY criteria is the best interests of the child, and unrelated conduct cannot be considered, then the results will sometimes seem unfair. I've had a few cases, for example, where custody was awarded to a father who had been abusive toward the mother during the relationship, because he was ultimately able to demonstrate a more stable home and hadn't actually been physically abusive toward the child(ren). Your heart would break for the mothers, who would have drug abuse or mental health issues or chronic instability that often related back to the abuse.

[Want More Babies]

I actually have seen this happen in real life. I worked with a girl who had an abusive, alcoholic husband. She had to pay a bundle for childcare because he was too damn drunk to watch the kids, and she could not get help with it from the state because there was an unemployed parent in the home. After she came in beaten bloody, we convinced her to take the kids to a women's shelter and file for divorce. He proceeded to come to work to threaten her, pour sugar in her gas tank, and even went to the women's shelter and tried to break in one night. All documented by law enforcement.

He won full custody as the stay-at-home parent, and she had to hand over half of her gross income every month in family support. Shasta County Courts, what is wrong with you?

It wouldn't surprise me if this is how James McDonald got his children away from Sandy and enacted a gag order against her. She has never said what happened, but I venture a guess it was something like this.

Horrible, horrible, horrible that things like this happen today. :angry-screaming: