The unfortunately named South Carolina Alimony Reform – a small but loud group of 200 or so men (and, unfathomably, some women) – are celebrating this month as the SC General Assembly moved one step closer to making SCAR’s dreams come true: the elimination of permanent alimony in SC divorce cases.
On March 8, 2016, the House Judiciary Committee voted unanimously to send a bill that radically rewrites the longstanding South Carolina laws on alimony in divorce cases to the House floor for a vote.
SCAR is an organization formed for the express purpose of advancing a political agenda that sounds a whole lot like the MRA-approved alternative. Men’s rights activists (MRAs) and the smaller, equally chauvinistic subset called “father’s rights activists” have long been howling that divorce laws and family court judges treat them unfairly by not giving them everything they want in the wake of a marriage’s dissolution.
SCAR’s sole function, as laid out by its chairman, Wyman Oxner, is to seek an end to something called permanent alimony. Permanent alimony is basically just what it sounds like: alimony paid by one spouse to the ex-spouse after the divorce is finalized until one of two things occurs: one of the parties die, or the party receiving the alimony begins to cohabitate with a romantic partner. In South Carolina, cohabitation must exceed 90 days in order to justify a cessation of alimony payments from the ex-spouse.
In a letter to the editor of the Charleston Post & Courier, Oxner protests that “practicing family court attorneys and judges know that if a man is ordered to pay permanent alimony, his standard of living decreases.” Of course, this complaint doesn’t exactly jibe with the experiences of millions of divorced women in the United States.
What SCAR and many groups like it in other states across the country want is a legislative ban on permanent alimony in favor of a much more limited span of time. In SCAR’s case, their proposals to the SC General Assembly called for alimony to be limited to half the term of the length of the marriage – and then, only for marriages exceeding 30 years in length.
From the SCAR website:
For example, let’s imagine a couple that divorces after being married for 30 years where the wife stayed at home to raise their two children, both of whom have reached the age of 18. Under existing law, the wife would be entitled to alimony for the rest of her life. If she dies at the age of 80, and was 48 at the time of the divorce, her ex-husband would be on the hook for alimony for 32 years.
Under SCAR’s preferred model, she would only be entitled to alimony for 15 years. So at age 63, she’d be summarily robbed of the money that supported her for the vast majority of her adult life. Thrust back into the workforce at an age where most employees are winding down their careers, and where many employers mask age discrimination in a long laundry list of pretextual reasons for not hiring, our hypothetical woman would find it nearly impossible to find another means of supporting herself.
Leading South Carolina divorce attorney Robert N. Rosen pulled no punches in an op-ed he wrote for the Charleston Post & Courier. He called SCAR’s proposed bill “one of the worst pieces of legislation ever filed in South Carolina.”
Rosen knows what he’s talking about. He co-authored the current SC alimony statutory provisions back in the 1980s:
Our Family Court judges hear a multitude of cases and decide them wisely and fairly pursuant to the alimony guidelines set forth by law, which addresses the parties’ ability to earn, health, assets and length of marriage.
Alimony laws are gender neutral. Few alimony cases are actually tried. Members of the very group protesting the current law were asked by the chair of the House subcommittee how many of them were ordered to pay alimony, and no one raised his hand. Apparently they all had agreed to pay alimony to settle their cases (and they may have received a benefit in exchange).
Rosen also points out that it’s impossible to draw a bright-line rule on alimony that’s fair to all parties in all cases. Noting that very few cases require a judge to rule on a contested issue of alimony – the vast majority of alimony provisions are actually agreed to by the parties and included in a written agreement which the judge then merely approves and incorporates into the case’s final order – Rosen stresses the flexibility afforded family court judges, who are after all in the best position to judge the credibility and interests of both parties:
“In the small number of cases where alimony is a true issue to be decided by a judge, the court often is faced with spouses who have limited employment opportunities because they are unwell, are under-educated, are rearing children — often with special needs — or are unable to work for other reasons beyond their immediate control. Without alimony, some abandoned spouses will never live a lifestyle even close to that which they experienced during the marriage.
In the small percentage of cases where alimony is awarded by the courts in the absence of an agreement of the parties, the alimony-receiving spouse has demonstrated a need for alimony to the satisfaction of the Family Court judge who has heard the witnesses, reviewed the evidence in the case, and considered the many factors required by law.”
Currently, South Carolina family court judges who are asked to decide issues of alimony can choose among several different types of alimony, including limited alimony, rehabilitative alimony, and lump sum alimony, among others.
SCAR would take that discretion away from family court judges, and put in its place a bright-line rule that would apply in every case, across the board.
It’s not hard to imagine scenarios in which this rule would work severe and unjust hardships on a spouse. Take our hypothetical situation above, and now add to it the husband’s harsh, abusive, and controlling treatment of the wife. Or imagine the wife is disabled and unable to support herself through employment of any kind.
Intriguingly, Rosen raises the question of whether SCAR is related to a known “father’s rights” group, Family Law Reform USA. Rosen states in his op-ed that the FLRUSA website referred to SCAR as a “state chapter.” As of the time of this writing, I can find no mention of SCAR on the FLRUSA website at all.
Another SC attorney, Vickie Eslinger, likewise pulled no punches in her response to the proposed changes. Calling the SCAR platform “an attack on South Carolina women,” Eslinger further asserted:
A lot of these men in South Carolina don’t want their wives to work. They want them to stay home and raise the children. The men advance their careers and build up their retirement and the wives have nothing.
It’s hard to conclude anything except that this is exactly the way SCAR wants it.
Featured image via Flikr by Ceridwen available under a Creative Commons 2.0 Generic license
