
When Divorce Was Off the Table, English Couples Dissolved Marriages with Beer - walterbell
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/wife-selling-england-beer
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holdenc
Somewhat off-topic, but here's how it works today: For a long term marriage in
which one spouse never worked, that spouse will likely receive spousal
maintenance (alimony) calculated based on the last four years of income from
the earning spouse. That will be owned in perpetuity regardless of future
earning power. And if you can't pay it, expect to be found in contempt of
court, and possibly see prison time.

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telesilla
Consider, if a marriage is a partnership and in this partnership it is agreed
by both consenting parties that one will work and one will not, then that's an
agreement entered into knowing, full well, that should the relationship end
then there will be such consequences. Anyone who complains about those
consequences down the road might wish to consider the relationship from the
beginning: good communication from day one goes a long way to avoiding such
eventualities being a surprise.

~~~
Scarblac
What if the agreement was that both parties would work, then one of the
parties lost their job, never finds a new one and after a while completely
stopped looking? Even if the other party really wanted them to and hated
having to work full time? What if eventually that was the cause for the
marriage breakdown?

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chrisseaton
People in this conversation need to be more discerning about what kind of
person they marry in the first place...

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tjr225
I admit I've never been in a divorce but the idea of marrying someone who
could come to respect me so little as to ruin my life would be a non starter.

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grawprog
You'd be surprised how much people can change over a decade, even 5 years.
Hell even over a year.

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ekianjo
The article keeps using the word "selling" to make it sound like the women in
question had no choice in the matter, but every example they give is of women
who already lived/had a relationship with their extra-marital lover. So it was
basically just a way to seal an already existing relationship.

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humanrebar
FTA:

> “The practice in England was not really a sale, but rather a sort of
> customary divorce plus remarriage in which a woman who had committed
> adultery was divorced by her husband and given to her partner in adultery,”
> says Matthew H. Sommer, a Department of History Chair at Stanford University
> and author of Polyandry and Wife-Selling in Qing Dynasty China.

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lxmorj
We had a guy come to our warehouse and work for a week. Pretty good worker. We
got a wage garnishing letter and he owes like $25k for two kids each (thought
they were duplicate docs at first), $8k and $3k.

He stopped coming or answering his phone as soon as we got the letters... Now
plenty of things could have happened, but my theory is the garnish is high
enough that he’s rather bounce around and get one ungarnished week out of as
many different places as possible. Even if the math doesn’t work out, he may
just be resentful enough to blow off jobs that comply w garnishing.

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grondilu
Good times.

Can someone remind me of any good reason to marry a woman nowadays?

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hopler
To raise children, to have regular access to safe and intimate sex, and all
the lifestyle, cost saving, and health benefits of cohabitation with someone,
in the expanded pool of potential partners that includes women who want
marriage. But opting out of family life and ending your gene line is fine, it
increases competition for the men who remain.

~~~
quickthrower2
None of that requires literal marriage, although that lifestyle is essentially
the same as marriage.

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HumanDrivenDev
_In 2019, it all looks terribly misogynistic._

No losing your house, no alimony... maybe they were on to something. Let wives
also be able to sell their husbands and bring it back!

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Broken_Hippo
If you own a house before marriage, perhaps a prenup would be prudent.
Otherwise, it wasn't really _your_ house, it was the family home.

Not everywhere has alimony either. If the money-making wife leaves the husband
who has raised kids, he's just out of luck.

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fiblye
>If you own a house before marriage, perhaps a prenup would be prudent.

If you're worried about losing a significant sum of your assets as a result of
marriage, the only solution is to not get married. Prenuptials are generally
considered to be worthless and any decent lawyer will find a way to get them
thrown out. According to point 5 here [1], a case could easily be made that
the plaintiff wasn't prepared for having to find a house after divorce, their
quality of life is significantly worse than the standard they've come to adapt
to after marriage, etc.

[1] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/jefflanders/2013/04/02/five-
rea...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/jefflanders/2013/04/02/five-reasons-your-
prenup-might-be-invalid/#2c52d7d719a5)

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logicchains
Or marry someone trustworthy, and make an informal agreement about how to
split assets upon divorce. And if you don't trust them to keep that agreement,
should you really be marrying them?

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saagarjha
In that case, why marry at all, since you can't trust them to not divorce you?

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Broken_Hippo
Because not everything is possible without marriage. Marriage gives a legal
framework to so many facets of life that is can be tricky when one doesn't.
For example, medical care. If you aren't married, a "spouse" may not be able
to make decisions for your care.

And that's just for folks already living in the same country. I couldn't live
with my spouse before marriage because we lived in different countries. While
one allowed a fiance visa, it was only good for 6 months, during which the
fiance not only couldn't work, but couldn't open a local bank account.

