In any event, the actual value of such goods is probably very small, when it is not exactly zero. It must be kept in mind, too, that we are not merely reporting the answers of the wife regarding her own property; this is the amount of property which she reported as available for division between the two.
It is true that in some cases she will not have known how much money the man had accumulated in his own bank account, or how many bonds he may have bought out of his savings at his place of work. Yet wide discrepancies between the reality and the guesses of the wife are probably not common. The wife almost always knows very well the income of her husband, even when she has little control over how he spends much of it. The wife might actually exaggerate the amount of property available, in view of some of the resentments expressed by the wife against the husband, and accuse him of taking it away. We do not believe, therefore, that this table is far from the reality. We shall comment further on these estimates when we discuss the property division at divorce.
Naturally, couples who divorce during the present inflationary period would have accumulated somewhat more property than these couples. There are also regional differences. On the other hand, the period of marital conflict and separation before the divorce decree is relatively long. During this later period the value of accumulated propertly doubtless declines. The demands of double households, the refusal on the part of one or the other to continue payments on house or furniture, a feeling on the part of both that any property accumulated might as well be expended now, the desire to hurt the other through dissipation of goods or money -- all of these factors would reduce whatever value of property there had been before the serious phases of conflict began.
However, the amount of property "accumulated by time of the divorce" is not an adequate reflection of the level of living during the course of the marriage. The family may have been living relatively well, even though, when debts are liquidated and the furniture goes back to the furniture company for failure to make the payments, there is absolutely nothing left in the bank and the couple may be said to have accumulated no property at all. The respondents may tell us about their level of living, but we could not be satisfied unless we could actually see the family in operation as it was before the divorce conflict began. Then we might have a clearer notion as to the economic life of the couple, or the more specific class aspects of the economic life.
It has been shown that the divorced, in conformity with their occupational distribution, are concentrated in the lower income brackets. In addition, it seems clear that the divorced husband is likely to have experienced considerable unsteadiness of employment. This finding is in agreement with studies of marital happiness. Some of these divorced women always or usually held full-time jobs during the marriage, and some always or usually held part-time jobs. These figures seem to be higher than the average for all married women in the U. S. Finally, it is clear that very little property was accumulated by the divorced couple prior to the breakup of the marriage. Forty percent claimed that there was no property at all to be divided at the time of the divorce. Consequently, whatever economic problems the average divorced mother faces after the divorce, she has already had a long history of economic difficulty even before the divorce.
No comments:
Post a Comment