Now I am on the Introduction chapter called Your Divorce. The 7 page introduction is so powerful that I have no choice but to type it up in full. I will try to just do summaries with the rest of the chapters. I don’t wish to hurt Jeb Abraham’s book sales, I only want to expose the truth. I have put a link under the book link section call What Divorce is Doing to Marriage and I highly recommend you buy a copy for yourself and a couple more for your friends.
Now here is the introduction, I will try to get it done in 3 parts.
The odds are 50% that your marriage will end in divorce. (I have posted the California Divorce Statistics that Lee Racounteur put together on the Don’t Get Married Board which is around 70%.)
The odds are 70% that your divorce will be filed by your wife.
The odds are 80% that your wife will get custody of your children – plus child support, alimony and/or a hefty chunk of your property.
From the moment your wife files for divorce, the State, acting through the court, will assert authority over everything you own. The court can then give a major share to your wife by applying the law of “equitable distribution.”
The law of equitable distribution is based on the “partnership theory of Marriage.” The theory holds that your marriage is a business partnership. Everything you earned during marriage you earned for the partnership. Therefore, upon divorce, all accumulated assets must be split “equitably” between you and your “partner.”
The theory also holds that if the property your ex is awarded at divorce doesn’t yield enough to support her at the standard of living during the marriage, then you should “equitably” pay her the difference in alimony until she becomes self supporting – in most states, even if the breakdown of the marriage was her fault.
The partnership theory of marriage doesn’t quite cover everything you made during marriage: it doesn’t cover your children.
Even though you and your ex were partners in the creation of your children, and even though you each contributed “equitably” to their upbringing, these considerations will carry little weight in court. Yielding to precedent and preconception, that court will commonly decide that it is in the “best interest” of your children to be in the sole custody of their mother.
As sole custodian, your ex will acquire primary paternal authority to live with your children and to determine their general development, including their health care, education, and religious training. You may “visit” with them on scheduled weekends.
After the court awards your ex the sole custody of your children, it will award you something very special also. It will award you the obligation to pay child support.
Your child support obligation will not be determined by your children’s basic needs. The court will first calculate your income, which will then proceed to tax at a predetermined “guideline” rate set by law. The guideline rate will vary according to the number of your children. It may also very according to your income level and that of your wife.
At your child support hearing, you’ll be permitted to introduce evidence that the guideline rate is too high – that it will generate more money than is needed by your children or that it will leave you with too little to live on. But the law strongly presumes that the guideline rate produces the correct minimum amount of child support. The burden of proof will be on you to overcome this presumption. The court won’t reduce your guideline rate, except in extreme circumstances.
If you are a wage earner, the child support you owe will be withheld from your wages and paid directly to your ex without your ever having to written her a check.
