Alimony laws obviously vary from state to state, and even from judge to judge. There is a lot of arbitrary variation.
In my situation, I overlooked many red flags early on in my relationship with my now ex-wife. Red flags that only became obvious in hindsight, that I have paid dearly for, that she has profited handsomely from. In my extensive case law research, in my state, my case and the resulting judgement was fairly typical.
My ex wife has never supported herself for a day in her life. She went straight from her parents house to mine. She has never held a full time job. She made the decision to not continue her education past high school. She made the decision to become a stay at home mom. My mistake was supporting her in her decisions. She is also diagnosed NPD, with all of the associated entitlement, martyr, and victim complexes that accompany that.
The initial settlement offer based on my $65,000 per year income would have given her 85% of my gross income between child support and alimony. I would have been left literally without enough to cover taxes, and the health insurance for her and the kids I was required to maintain. The lifetime alimony award she was asking for was $2,500 per month for life. She was 37, in supreme health, fully able bodied when we divorced. She also wanted half of my retirement as it stood when I retired, not where it was when we divorced. The thing is, I had no retirement savings, as in zero dollars, because her financial mismanagement left us filing for bankruptcy two years before we divorced.
After my own personal research, and talking to several attorneys, there was a very real chance my ex-wife could be awarded exactly what she was asking for. One caveat about lifetime alimony vs temporary rehabilitative alimony in my state is that a lifetime award is not automatically ended upon the recipient remarrying.
She was also seeking full custody.
The United States got rid of debtors prisons a long time ago, but they have left a loophole wide open when it comes to child support and alimony...failure to pay is not considered a debt, it is considered contempt of court...a jailable offense. Looking at the numbers, it was an inevitability that I would end up in jail for failure to pay. Not because I was being an assh0le dead beat...because there was simply not enough money for me to do what the court ordered.
She used the kids as leverage against me. Said she'd be open to negotiations if I agreed to let her have full custody. What choice did I have? There was case law in my jurisdiction indicating that awards she was seeking in similar circumstances had been given by the courts. What good would shared custody be if I still ended up in jail.
In the end, even agreeing to her having custody, I still had to spend over $20,000 just to get every other weekend, five year alimony so she can get her degree and back into the work force, and keeping my non existent retirement.
Well, as of right now, four years later, she married her affair partner, hasn't gone back to school, still has not gotten a job, and still doesn't actually have any kids at home. The youngest is 14. She still tries to demand extras from me...for the kids of course. She is the epitome of the dead beat mom.