Quote: (12-08-2010 04:15 AM)oldnemesis Wrote:
Quote: (12-07-2010 05:57 PM)playa_with_a_passport Wrote:
Off the top of my head, I can think of one type of average Joe who often get raped anally with no lube by Family Court Judges during divorce proceedings. Those unlucky bastards are guys who are lucky enough to still have defined benefit Pension plans. Military, Civil service and private Union workers still get a pension based on time on the job. Those pensions are considered communal property. Thus, the old lady gets a piece of your pension equal to how many years the marriage lasted.
Interesting. I googled it, and yes, you're right. But I see the reason for that - pension payments are type of deferred income, when you pay today and receive it in future. To pay into the pension fund today, he uses his today income, which is communal property. This means the spouse is also investing into the pension, and therefore should benefit from it as well. Same is true for a spouse investing in 401(k).
Not necessaly, Some govt agencies even have non contributory pensions plans(Port Authority, the agency who owned the World Trade Center is one of those agencies) Ex wifes are still entitled to half even in those cases where the employee did not contributed a single cent, just like your wife would be entitled to half if you won the Lotto. Pensions are worth their weight in gold and are way more valuable than any 401k. So even if an ex wife is making big bucks 100k+ a year,she would gladly fork over half of her 401k in order to get a guaranteed monthly payment for life. Plus, she gets the pleasure of spending your money buying toyz for her boy toy.
For example, in order for the ex wife of my buddy to get an annuity that pays 25k a year(50% of 50k) for life she would have to fork over 500k(http://www.bankrate.com/calculators/inve...lator.aspx) to an insurance company to buy an annuity. So my buddy would only come up ahead if his wife had over 1 million bucks in her 401k. My point is still valid, you don't need to be wealthy in order for a divorce to be financially devastating. In fact, average Joes get it the worse because they are more likely to work for a paycheck. Thus, they cant hide their assets as easly as say Tiger Woods would.The only guys who have nothing to worry about divorces are guys like the Kevin Federalines who basically are glorified bums.