The marriage buyout

From divorce court to popular culture, "alimony" is a dirty word. Unpopular and rarely ordered, alimony awards are frequently inconsistent and unpredictable. The institution itself is often viewed as a historical relic that harkens back to a gendered past in which women lacked the economic independence to free themselves from their husbands. In short, critics of alimony claim it has no place in contemporary visions of marriage. But as Cynthia Lee Starnes argues in The Marriage Buyout, alimony is often the only practical tool for making sure that the law of divorce treats primary caregivers as equal partners in marriage rather than as suckers. Her solution is to radically revise the concept as a marriage buyout. Starne's buyouts draw on a partnership model of marriage that reinforces communal norms, providing a gender-neutral alternative to alimony that assumes equality in spousal contribution, responsibility, and right. Her quantification formulae support new default rules that make buyouts more certain and predictable than their current alimony counterparts. Looking beyond alimony, Starnes outlines a new vision of marriages with children, describing a co-parenting partnership betw