Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Divorce does funny things

theparisreview.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 386 posts

Re: Divorce does funny things

#131

Post by brigandish »

88840-8855 wrote: post #64
cm2012 wrote: post #58

On infidelity - to some extent people's personal business is not my business. But if I hear that someone was unfaithful to their spouse, my business trust in them goes waaay down. If they're willing to break trust with the person closest to them in their life, what chance do I have as a mere business partner of not being screwed over at some point?

i think that's a little naive. cheating is a highly emotional thing. business relationships are a rational thing. although some people are mixing both up, most of people i have worked with manage to separate. one of my moost loyal colleagues is cheating on his wife for years. and yet, he is loyal to the tasks and to the company. hence, i find your view a little naive and funny and perhaps would label it with some -is…

Puritanism might be the word you were looking for.

Re: Divorce does funny things

#132

Post by watwut »

klipt wrote: post #117
watwut wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All can be true. Reading statistics, on average, men are financially better after divorce women worst. Men feel more lonely after divorce and women feel happier after divorce. Men are more likely to find new partner sooner after divorce, women are more likely to stay single for long time.

> Reading statistics, on average, men are financially better after divorce women worst How is financially better calculated? Things like child support and alimony seem to not be counted for a lot of purposes - like tax - so the woman could be poorer on paper while actually having more money in practice.

Afaik, they are counted in. Also, alimony are not as frequent as legend has it. Nor they last to infinity.

Being primary caregiver, even with child support financially costs quite a lot. Not just in direct expenses, but also in job opportunities and in terms of what jobs you can have, how you can progress on the ladder.

Re: Divorce does funny things

#133

Post by watwut »

lelanthran wrote: post #106
watwut wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If men file for custody they get 50/50. Men who ask for full custody also statistically win more often. You are doing disservice to both kids and men when you tell them they cant have it.

> If men file for custody they get 50/50. Men who ask for full custody also statistically win more often. That's a nice statistic. Where did you get it? > You are doing disservice to both kids and men when you tell them they cant have it. Well I apologise for that, every lawyer I spoke to during my divorce (maybe ... 10?) said not to bother, the odds of a court deciding in favour of the mother were 3/5.

> every lawyer I spoke to during my divorce (maybe ... 10?) said not to bother, the odds of a court deciding in favour of the mother were 3/5

That is completely absurd risk reward ratio to reject.

Re: Divorce does funny things

#134

Post by watwut »

sharikous wrote: post #111
watwut wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If men file for custody they get 50/50. Men who ask for full custody also statistically win more often. You are doing disservice to both kids and men when you tell them they cant have it.

If it gets ugly the bias in favor of women gets stronger. All of this is anedoctal but in my experience I saw many women willing to use false accusations of violence knowing it was a win win. They knew they wouldn't be punished even if it was proven the accusations were false. And that is a powerful tool to get custody. And of course for younger children the custody to the mother is often enshrined into law directly.

And then there are men who are violent or abusive and neither cops nor courts believe the woman. Those are not rare at all.

Both situations happen.

Re: Divorce does funny things

#135

Post by ben_w »

varjag wrote: post #116
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, since this is HN please show the studies and stats.

Do you consult arxiv every time you jaywalk?

Non sequitur; a better question would be “do you consult psyarxiv every time jaywalking is discussed”. This site being the kind of place it is: https://psyarxiv.com/yfsed/

Back to the topic, I found this interesting, though I am unqualified to judge it and only read abstract and conclusion: https://psyarxiv.com/2stcv/

Re: Divorce does funny things

#136

Post by lelanthran »

watwut wrote: post #133
lelanthran wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If men file for custody they get 50/50. Men who ask for full custody also statistically win more often. That's a nice statistic. Where did you get it? > You are doing disservice to both kids and men when you tell them they cant have it. Well I apologise for that, every lawyer I spoke to during my divorce (maybe ... 10?) said not to bother, the odds of a court deciding in favour of the mother were 3/5.

> every lawyer I spoke to during my divorce (maybe ... 10?) said not to bother, the odds of a court deciding in favour of the mother were 3/5 That is completely absurd risk reward ratio to reject.

> That is completely absurd risk reward ratio to reject.

Not really. The impact of losing is "lose hundreds of thousands, be in debt for the next decade and have my work (and life in general) suffer", while still having to deal with having to then fight for access continuously.

The impact of winning was "losing hundreds of thousands, be in debt for a decade, and still have the risk of custody reversal in a future case".

The only winning move here is not to play[1] unless the odds are greatly in your favour - it's cheaper for the female so the female's impact in a win or a lose is substantially less.

Regardless of the risk/reward ratio, when 10 lawyers tell you not to bother, you'd be stupid to ignore their advice.

In any case, I still want to now where you got your statistics from.

[1] All I had to deal with after that was to enforce the contact. That took 3 court cases (luckily, all in my favour).

Re: Divorce does funny things

#137

Post by lelanthran »

sdenton4 wrote: post #124
lelanthran wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If men file for custody they get 50/50. Men who ask for full custody also statistically win more often. That's a nice statistic. Where did you get it? > You are doing disservice to both kids and men when you tell them they cant have it. Well I apologise for that, every lawyer I spoke to during my divorce (maybe ... 10?) said not to bother, the odds of a court deciding in favour of the mother were 3/5.

Not bothering to file because of a 3/5 chance of losing seems crazy. It's actually pretty hard to tell 60/40 apart from 50/50, especially if there's lots of covariates.

> Not bothering to file because of a 3/5 chance of losing seems crazy. It's actually pretty hard to tell 60/40 apart from 50/50, especially if there's lots of covariates.

It only seems like that because you're looking at the raw numbers. When you look at the actual stakes, it's quite different.

Let's say we play a coin-toss game: Each time I win the toss, I give you $1. Each time you win the toss, you give me $100.

Would you play? Think it's not fair? Okay, lets make it fair.

Each time you win, you win $1m. Each time you lose, you pay $1m. Would you play against me (I'm not rich)? Would you agree to play against Bill Gates/Jeff Bezos/etc?

It's not just the odds that matters, it's the fact t, even on even odds, in some cases you stand to lose much more than the opposing side.

Re: Divorce does funny things

#138

Post by lelanthran »

klipt wrote: post #112
watwut wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If men file for custody they get 50/50. Men who ask for full custody also statistically win more often. You are doing disservice to both kids and men when you tell them they cant have it.

> If men file for custody But that's not a random sample. Given the widely perceived bias against men, one would expect only the men with the strongest cases to try for custody, and you would expect them to have better outcomes than average men. If as an experiment you randomly selected a group of men and got them to file for custody, their success rate would probably be lower.

> Given the widely perceived bias against men, one would expect only the men with the strongest cases to try for custody, and you would expect them to have better outcomes than average men.

Actually, even on close-to-even odds, men don't try anyway (losing has a much larger effect if you're a man). See my response in this thread elsewhere for why I declined to fight when my estimated odds were 3/5.

Re: Divorce does funny things

#139

Post by steve_adams_86 »

mrsmee89 wrote: post #9

As a divorced man, I can attest to this wholeheartedly. There's an energy a man gets when you're building a family that helps motivate through the struggle. When you get divorced, especially when kids are involved, there's an expectation in our society (court system, social pressure, etc) to continue life as if that energy still exists, it simply doesn't. It's maddening. Breaking up a family is lose-lose. There are n…

I don't agree that men are always the biggest losers. I have friends who are women who have fared so much worse than their male partners for a variety of reasons. I do believe though that (at least in my bubble of the world) it's generally thought that men are the winners, so when you're the loser, it's fairly isolating and lacking of any sympathy or concern in a situation that can be absolutely crushing. If you want support, you're likely not going to get it unless you have close family or friends who care enough to see past unfortunate social norms and simply care about you.

If you involve kids, I think it gets quite a bit worse here. My experience has been that family law is mostly a level playing field, but mothers still have the upper hand. This again is something which no one really cares about or will do anything about; you have to suck it up and carry on. There is no way around it.

Re: Divorce does funny things

#140

Post by kkjjkgjjgg »

mpol wrote: post #130
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does remaining in a relationship for your children raise questions about trustworthiness?

There is not only loyalty in that situation. There is also lying to your partner and the children, and the example and values that you give to your children. Apparently the children are important to you, otherwise you would be gone from a bad relationship. It involves lying to people that are important to you, which does not speak well for trustworthiness. I can imagine the children are more important than someone ou…

What would be the alternative to lying?
Post reply on HN