{"product_id":"marriage-buyout","title":"Marriage Buyout","description":"\u003cp\u003eFrom divorce court to popular culture, alimony\u003cbr\u003e\nis a dirty word. Unpopular and rarely ordered, the awards are frequently\u003cbr\u003e\ninconsistent and unpredictable. The institution itself is often viewed as an\u003cbr\u003e\nhistorical relic that harkens back to a gendered past in which women lacked the\u003cbr\u003e\neconomic independence to free themselves from economic support by their spouses.\u003cbr\u003e\nIn short, critics of alimony claim it has no place in contemporary visions of\u003cbr\u003e\nmarriage as a partnership of equals. But as Cynthia Lee Starnes argues in The\u003cbr\u003e\nMarriage Buyout, alimony is often the only practical tool for ensuring that divorce does not treat\u003cbr\u003e\ntoday’s primary caregivers as if they were suckers. Her solution is to\u003cbr\u003e\nradically reconceptualize alimony as a marriage buyout.\u003cbr\u003e\nStarnes’s buyouts draw on a partnership model of marriage that reinforces\u003cbr\u003e\ncommunal norms of marriage, providing a gender-neutral alternative to alimony\u003cbr\u003e\nthat assumes equality in spousal contribution, responsibility, and right. Her\u003cbr\u003e\nquantification formulae support new default rules that make buyouts more\u003cbr\u003e\ncertain and predictable than their current alimony counterparts. Looking beyond\u003cbr\u003e\nalimony, Starnes outlines a new vision of marriages with children, describing a\u003cbr\u003e\nco-parenting partnership between committed couples, and the conceptual basis\u003cbr\u003e\nfor income sharing between divorced parents of minor children. Ultimately,\u003cbr\u003e\nunder a partnership model, the focus of alimony is on gain rather than loss and\u003cbr\u003e\nequality rather than power: a spouse with disparately low earnings isn’t a\u003cbr\u003e\nsucker or a victim dependent on a fixed alimony payment, but rather an equal\u003cbr\u003e\nstakeholder in marriage who is entitled at divorce to share any gains the\u003cbr\u003e\nmarriage produced.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"New York University Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Product","offer_id":54222576124248,"sku":"9780814708248","price":49.99,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/marriage-buyout","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}