I suppose I just wanted to vent my frustration about someone who is told by the GB to shun her ex husband and have nothing to do with him, yet still take his money each month. Am I wrong to think of this as double standards?
Yes, you are wrong to think that a double standard, and the reasons why have been repeatedly explained to you in this tread! At this point, I'm starting to wonder about how you probably acted as a husband! News flash! People who get divorced generally do not like each other. Adamah succinctly noted that divorce is a legal mechanism for two people to shun each other.
As a result, the vast majority of women (and men) collecting alimony have NOTHING to do with their former spouses. Why should your former wife be held to a different standard just because ONE of the things she dislikes about you is your religous beliefs?
her contributions to the marriage can't really justify me having to pay her £10,000 ($16,000) per year for the rest of my life
And it is a rare person who ever thinks the other spouse did anything worthy of alimony! And yet, two judges have concluded that her contributions to the marriage do "justify" her receiving the money.
I think it is high time to revisit the alimony amount. One circumstance that has changed is that your daughter is now grown up.
What does the grown child have to do with the alimony the judge awarded the wife? The impact of the his daughter reaching majority was addressed via his child support payments.
Additionally, he HAS gone back to court to get his alimony reduced, and that judge did not discontinue it either. Markw wrote, "I actually went back to court three years ago and had the maintenance reduced from £700 to £300 per month."
I suspect these judges are seeing something that Markw1509 likely has not disclosed on this thread. ; ) I'm not saying he is purposefully misleading us. It's just that those who have to pay alimony often put little value on their former spouses contributions and niggardly minimize those contributions they are forced to acknowledge. Hence, they end up feeling that they have been treated unjustly by the courts. If they view their former spouses contributions so derisively, it makes me question what it was like to live that former spouse's life/marriage.
The morality of taking money off of someone who repulses you to the point that you shun them aka those who are dead to you - is pretty clear. It's kind of like people who profess to hate anyone on welfare and who call them losers or lazy fat slobs, but who quietly put their hand out for any free government money they can get..there's a disconnect they have where they don't see their attitude on one side in relation to their actions on the other.
I disagree with this analogy Sammieswife. In the later, a person is stating a moral stance and then acting contrary to his/her stated stance. Such is not so in the former. The former is an example of paying a bill. Also, I suspect the vast majority of people collecting alimony have nothing to do with their ex-spouses! Just because they "shun" their ex-spouse for reasons other than religion does not make one immoral and the other moral.