DeSantis should eliminate permanent alimony and let divorcees work for a living

For more than a decade, Florida Republicans have tried unsuccessfully to modernize their state's child support laws for the 21st century. At every turn, Republican governors have thwarted family-friendly reforms.

With his 20-point re-election lead, Ron DeSantis has the political capital and opportunity for further electoral gains to finally reform outdated child support laws to make the tax base more equitable for working mothers and fathers in the Sunshine State.

The DESANTIS administration prohibits any classroom discussion of gender identity and sexual orientation

Under current Florida law, divorced workers are automatically required to pay alimony until their death if the marriage lasted only 17 years. This maintenance amount is a burden on a breadwinner spouse as they are forced to support an unemployed spouse in order to maintain their standard of living as they did during the marriage.

Because Florida is a no-fault divorce state, the recipient of alimony may also be the spouse who initiated the divorce for some reason.

The alimony reform will eliminate permanent alimony and, most importantly, require judges to begin proceedings under the assumption that both spouses will receive equal custody of minor children. The reform limits “rehabilitative alimony” – that is, temporary alimony provided while the unemployed spouse finds a job – to five years and imposes the assumption that both parties will have a lower standard of living due to the non-compliance of their marriage. The law also provides for a better staggering of maintenance and prohibits it for marriages that last less than three years.

This is all completely separate from child support and child custody arrangements.

Of course, the group with the shameless name of First Wives Advocacy lobbied against the bill. One of the unemployed activists, Camille Fiveash, lamented to the Tampa Bay Times that she had been supported solely by child support for the past 12 years.

“I’m going to be penniless and dependent on the government, collecting food stamps and everything else,” Fiveash said.

Will this bill really impoverish you? If this is the case, it almost proves why it should be passed. It will force them to go out and actually get a damn job.

Statistically speaking, new hires have never had such a good time due to the tight labor market.

Alimony made sense when divorce was only granted for marital misconduct. It is important that an abuser or adulterer be financially punished for breaking the basic marital bond, thereby preventing him from being able to afford to financially entrap another spouse. But with the introduction of no-fault divorce, alimony is now just a punishment for contributing to the economy.

In a world where women now have equal rights in the workplace and actually outperform men in science, this makes even less sense.

Half a century ago, a woman did not necessarily return to work after her children went to school because, in many cases, she could not. Women were not only discriminated against in the labor market, but were also sexually harassed much more frequently than today. But thanks to landmark civil rights laws that prevent discrimination against women based on their gender, marital status, motherhood, or lack thereof, women's share of the labor force has risen from a third in the 1950s to 57% today.

Today, a parent can spend a few years having small children and immediately return to work as soon as those children go to school. The Florida bill would continue to subsidize time away from work, but one spouse – perhaps someone who didn't want to get divorced in the first place – would no longer be required to pay a subsidy for life while the other Spouse refuses to contribute to the economy.

The First Wives Advocacy group claims to represent the interests of “wives, mothers and children,” but it's hard to imagine a less feminist and less family-friendly group that tells women they have to rely on husbands , who leave them, and on both women and men, that if they commit to marriage, they may have to pay an abuser or an adulteress for the rest of their lives. Because the proportion of maintenance recipients is increasingly men, which means that the main beneficiaries of the current law are no longer women, but rather slackers of both sexes.

None of this is intended to mention the economic argument.

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These “first wives” who brag about living off their spouses' generosity are directly contributing to the bankruptcy of Social Security and the ever-worsening debt burden of the young workers responsible for keeping the entire American economy afloat. The world's largest economy cannot stay at the top if pre-retirement workers without disabilities or preschool-age children refuse to get off the couch and work.

DeSantis has the political capital to right a grave wrong, and he should use it. Alimony reform would serve as a reminder that equality also takes precedence over redistributive justice.