Tag Archives: Marriage

Judge rules that man must pay $50,000 a month to ex-girlfriend for 10 years

When I was younger, I used to think that having definite views on morality and theology was a bad thing. I had my share of rejections by Christian women who didn’t like that I rejected universalism and annihilationism. Others didn’t like that I was pro-life. And today, most Christian women tell me that supporting gay rights is a non-negotiable for them. But maybe being alone was not all bad.

The news story is from one of Canada’s national newspapers, the National Post:

A wealthy businessman will have to pay more than $50,000 a month in spousal support for 10 years to a woman with whom he had a long-term romantic relationship even though they kept separate homes and had no children together, Ontario’s top court has ruled.

Under Ontario law, an unmarried couple are considered common-law spouses if they have cohabited — lived together in a conjugal relationship — continuously for at least three years. But that doesn’t necessarily mean living in the same home, the court found.

[…]When their 14-year relationship finally broke down in May 2015, Climans asked the courts to recognize her as Latner’s spouse and order him to pay her support. He argued she had been a travel companion and girlfriend, nothing more. As such, he said, they were never legally spouses and he owed no support. An eight-day trial ensued.

In her decision in February 2019, Superior Court Justice Sharon Shore sided with Climans. She ruled they were in fact long-time spouses, finding that despite their separate home, they lived under one roof at Latner’s cottage for part of the summer, and during winter vacations in Florida. Shore ordered him to pay her $53,077 monthly indefinitely.

Superior Court Justice Sharon Shore didn’t care that the man never married this woman, or lived with her, or had children with her. He had money, and she wanted it, so the judge gave it to her.

Elsewhere in the article, we learn that he had asked her to sign a pre-nuptial agreement many times, and each time she refused. (Those are not even enforced in divorce courts) It’s like her plan all along was to demand that a judge awarded her all of this man’s money.

Some people will say “well, these are Ontario family courts, this is normal. Haven’t you heard about what happened to Dave Foley?” I think every man knows the story of what the Ontario divorce courts did to Dave Foley.

Here is a story about it from the far-left Toronto Star, otherwise known as the Toronto Red Star.

It says:

Dave Foley of beloved Toronto sketch troupe the Kids in the Hall is starting a new career in standup comedy, but not in Toronto — he suspects he’ll be arrested if he returns to Canada.

The 48-year-old faces a back child-support bill in Ontario of more than half a million dollars: the accumulation of a debt that accrues steadily at more than $17,000 per month. On the set of Servitude, a film shot in Toronto last year, “I told the production guys, I have a court appearance on Monday and there’s a good chance I’ll be in jail on Monday afternoon,’” Foley said in an interview with the Star.

During an appearance on comic Marc Maron’s WTF podcast last month, Foley explained that his marriage to Toronto writer Tabatha Southey ended during his run on NBC’s five-year hit comedy NewsRadio, and he has failed in his efforts to adjust his child support downward to reflect his new life after sitcom stardom.

“My income has dropped in the last 10 years, as anyone can tell from the number of s—ty movies I’ve been in,” says Foley. “I’m not exactly picking and choosing my projects.” However, four years ago, Superior Justice Nancy Backhouse denied his motion to vary his support payments.

[…]Foley says that Ontario’s Family Responsibility Office now has an enforcement order and last year sought a six-month jail sentence for him, which was to extend indefinitely, until the overdue support was paid.

Ontario family courts are notoriously anti-male, and men know this. Unfortunately, the female judges who make these rulings don’t seem to understand that men know what they are doing, and then opt out of marriage. It must be so wonderful for these judges to punish the men who appear before them. But they can’t punish the men who respond to what they are doing by declining to marry women, and then declining to date women, and then declining to even speak to women.

I looked up Superior Justice Nancy Backhouse, and found another article about her decisions, entitled “Judge rejects pre-nup, awards ex-wife $5.3-million”. So, pre-nuptial agreements are also thrown out in Ontario divorce courts.

But it’s not just Ontario. I have two Christian friends here in America who married their Christian wives as virgins, and then their wives divorced them. I heard what happened to them in divorce court. They lost custody of their kids, and they are forced to pay alimony and child support even though their ex-wives poison the children against them, and deny them communication rights and visitation rights. And men know that this is happening to other men. How can women expect men to marry when the financial risks are so high?

Forbes magazine explains:

Of the 400,000 people in the United States receiving post-divorce spousal maintenance, just 3 percent were men, according to Census figures. Yet 40 percent of households are headed by female breadwinners — suggesting that hundreds of thousands of men are eligible for alimony, yet don’t receive it.

The divorced courts are biased against men, and men are getting the message. They look at these cases, and they understand that marriage is not worth the financial risks. They don’t want to have their possessions stolen by radical feminist judges.

Further reading

An excellent book to read about this issue is Dr. Stephen Baskerville’s book “Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family“. You can read what the book is about here. Dr. Baskerville is a Christian and a conservative. He has a PhD from London School of Economics, and teaches at Patrick Henry College, a conservative Christian college.

Ryan T. Anderson lectures on marriage and why it matters

Here’s the lecture:

About the speaker:

Ryan T. Anderson researches and writes about marriage and religious liberty as the William E. Simon Fellow at The Heritage Foundation. He also focuses on justice and moral principles in economic thought, health care and education, and has expertise in bioethics and natural law theory.

Anderson, who joined the leading Washington think tank’s DeVos Center for Religion and Civil Society in 2012, also is the editor of Public Discourse, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, N.J.

Anderson’s recent work at Heritage focuses on the constitutional questions surrounding same-sex “marriage.” He is the co-author with Princeton’s Robert P. George and Sherif Girgis of the acclaimed book “What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense” (Encounter Books, December 2012).

The lecture starts at 7:20 in. The lecture ends at 49:35. There are 32 minutes of Q&A.

Introduction:

  • When talking about marriage in public, we should talk about philosophy, sociology and public policy
  • Gay marriage proponents need to be pressed to define what marriage is, on their view
  • Every definition of marriage is going to include some relationships, and exclude others
  • It’s meaningless to portray one side as nice and the other mean
  • Typically, marriage redefiners view marriage as a more intense emotional relationship
  • Marriage redefiners should be challenged in three ways:
  • 1) Does the redefined version of marriage have a public policy reason to prefer only two people?
  • 2) Does the redefined version of marriage have a reason to prefer permanence?
  • 3) Does the redefined version of marriage have a reason to prefer sexual exclusivity?
  • Also, if marriage is just about romance, then why is the state getting involved in recognizing it?
  • The talk: 1) What marriage is, 2) Why marriage matters, 3) What are the consequences of redefining marriage?

What marriage is:

  • Marriage unites spouses – hearts, minds and bodies
  • Marriage unites spouses to perform a good: creating a human being and raising that human being
  • Marriage is a commitment: permanent and exclusive
  • Male and female natures are distinct and complementary

The public purpose of marriage:

  • to attach men and women to each other
  • to attach mothers and fathers to their children
  • there is no such thing as parenting, there is only mothering and fathering
  • the evidence shows that children benefit from mothering and fathering
  • boys who grow up without fathers are more likely to commit crimes
  • girls who grow up without fathers are more likely to have sex earlier
  • Children benefit from having a mother and a father
  • can’t say that fathers are essential for children if we support gay marriage, which makes fathers optional
  • without marriage: child poverty increases, crime increases, social mobility decreases, welfare spending increases
  • when government encourages marriage, then government has less do to – stays smaller, spends less
  • if we promote marriage as an idea, we are not excluding gay relationships or even partner benefits
  • finally, gay marriage has shown itself to be hostile to religious liberty

Consequences redefining marriage:

  • it undermines the norm in public like that kids deserve a mom and a dad – moms and dads are interchangeable
  • it changes the institution of marriage away from the needs of children, and towards the needs of adults
  • it undermines the norm of permanence
  • we learned what happens when marriage is redefined before: with no-fault divorce
  • no-fault divorce: after this became law, divorce rates doubled – the law changed society
  • gay marriage would teach society that mothers and fathers are optional when raising children
  • if marriage is what people with intense feelings do, then how can you rationally limit marriage to only two people?
  • if marriage is what people with intense feelings do, then if other people cause intense feelings, there’s no fidelity
  • if marriage is what people with intense feelings do, then if the feelings go away, there is no permanence
  • the public policy consequences to undermining the norms of exclusivity and permanence = fatherless children and fragmented families
  • a final consequences is the decline and elimination of religious liberty – e.g. – adoption agencies closing, businesses being sued

We’re doing very well on abortion, but we need to get better at knowing how to discuss marriage. If you’re looking for something short to read, click here. If you want to read a long paper that his book is based on.

How will men adapt to violence against men and false accusations?

A massive decline in marriage rate
A massive decline in marriage rate (per 1,000 of population in America)

A couple of women who write for the Daily Wire keep posting scary stories of men being mistreated by women. I’m going to link to a few of their stories below, from last week. Then I want to say something about why these sorts of events are happening so frequently, and what message it sends to men who might want to have a committed relationship with a woman.

The two women writers at Daily Wire are Amanda Prestigiacamo and Ashe Schow.

Here is one from May 8th, by Amanda:

Thirty-six-year-old Kenan Basic spent weeks in jail, lost his relationship, and was repeatedly slandered after a woman falsely accused him of sexual misconduct.

According to Australia-based 7NEWS, Basic was accused of “indecently assaulting and stalking” Caitlyn Gray, a 19-year-old woman, after he stopped to help her when her car broke down late last year.

Basic apparently spent two hours fixing Gray’s vehicle. As shown by surveillance footage, the smiling pair seem happy, hugging after the car is fixed and eventually parting ways. But according to the news station, “Gray told police Basic had allegedly propositioned her for sex in return for his help before he pursued her in the car and later indecently assaulted her at a different location.” Authorities investigating the incident called Basic’s behavior “predatory.”

Months later, however, the truth about the incident finally came out: Basic never assaulted the woman. The 19-year-old confessed to police during an interrogation that she fabricated evidence and made up the assault whole-cloth.

So what lesson would a man learn from this? Well, he would learn that women can’t be trusted to be grateful when they are given help.

More:

The falsely accused man noted that he’s “never been jailed, never had a criminal record or anything.”

“I always help people, all my life,” he said. “And this was the first time a snake bit me.”

The 36-year-old said he’ll “probably never help again, ya know. I don’t want that to happen again.”

I don’t know why this woman made this false accusation. Studies show that women generally make false accusations for attention, for an alibi, to get revenge, or to get sympathy after they’ve chosen to have sex with someone who ignored them after. This case doesn’t fit any of these scenarios. Maybe she felt slighted because he didn’t try anything with her, and that made her feel unattractive. But the message to good men who want to help women is clear: the risk is too great.

Here’s another story from May 11th, by Ashe:

Ah to be one of those poor, oppressed women who have fewer privileges than men.

A woman like Jazzmin Fry, who was so oppressed that when she stabbed a complete stranger — a man — with one of her stilettos for literally no reason, she only had to pay a $250 fine as punishment. Her conviction wasn’t even recorded outside of the press.

[…]The victim, Kyle Johns, 19, was taken to the hospital and needed two staples in his head to repair the wound.

What lesson will men learn from stories like this one? Well, they’ll learn that there is a double standard in the justice system, such that men are held accountable for their choices, but women are not. That’s because men are seen as responsible for their actions, and women are not seen as responsible – no matter how much harm they cause.

Ashe says:

Women in the justice system — whether in Australia, or the U.K., or the U.S. — get off much easier than men for the same crimes. One of the biggest disparities can be found in sexual assaults against minors. When women commit these crimes — whether against a young boy or girl, or teenager — they receive much lighter sentences than men do for the same crime.

As I have written previously, men who abuse children (rightly) receive harsh punishments. A 32-year-old man who sexually abused a young girl over the course of several years faced 366 years to life in prison. Yet a 25-year-old woman who pleaded guilty to raping young boys at a trailer park only received five years probation.

[…]In 2012, University of Michigan professor Sonja Starr researched the gender disparities in federal criminal cases and found that “men receive 63% longer sentences on average than women do” and that “Women are … twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted.”

Men are very aware of disparities in the criminal justice system, but when I talk to women about it, they are rarely aware of it. But this is just one example of an area where men are at a disadvantage, and the problem only gets worse as more and more feminists take control of legislation, law enforcement and criminal courts. Almost every man knows a story of about how divorce courts treated a man badly, whether it be with unfair alimony or child support, false accusations, or even jail. And it seems like all the momentum in society is to make everything better for women, and worse for men. This is easily seen by looking at studies of how the public schools – which are dominated by  female teachers and administrators – discriminate against boys.

Here’s a third one from May 13th, by Amanda:

A false accusation of sexual assault turned deadly last month in Utah when a teen girl’s brother sought vengeance over the claim of sexual assault that never was.

A 16-year-old girl, whose identity has not been revealed because she’s a minor, told her 17-year-old brother that Michael Fife, 62, sexually assaulted her on a Cache Valley Transit District (CVTD) bus. The 17-year-old tracked down Fife and physically attacked him when he got off the bus; wounds from the altercation left him dead.

According to Logan Police Department, reviewed surveillance footage from the bus revealed that the alleged assault never happened.

According to the police, “the video showed Mr. Fife walking past the girl, but no sexual assault occurred.” Did she lie just to see what effect it would have on her brother?

My thoughts

Here is a fourth story about an NFL player who refused to have sex with a woman, and he was falsely charged with raping her, as reported on May 10th, in The College Fix.

This one is important, because this guy lost millions of dollars in salary, because he was kept out of the NFL two years, when his accuser had no evidence whatsoever. That’s how unfair the system has become for men, and men with more to lose have more reason to avoid any relationships with women. Men with more money have more to lose to a false accusation. And these stories are so common in our age.

When a man measures up how much a woman adds to his life, and compares it to the risk of being cleaned out on a fact-free false accusation, it’s not a good value proposition. Women often look at things only from the woman’s point of view, and so they are mystified by how men could think like this. They just can’t seem to put themselves into men’s shoes to understand how dangerous women have become to men. And then men get told how weak and cowardly they are for refusing to ask women out, for refusing to commit, etc.

I think that the only women who are safe are women who have put in the effort to learn about these injustices towards men. If you are interested in a woman for a relationship, then ask her to name a few challenges that men face in this anti-male society. Ask her if she has a male relative who has faced a false accusation. Ask her if she has experience battling for men’s rights. If she doesn’t stand up for good men before marriage, she won’t respect you after marriage.

Women of the previous generation knew how to prepare herself for wife and mother roles, and present herself to a man in order to persuade him to marry her. Too many women in today’s generation have lost that ability to be feminine. They have lost the ability to be a real friend and support to a man. They don’t want to nurture his ability to be a masculine leader in a home.

It is rare to find a woman who is putting in the work to learn about things like abortion, divorce, and same-sex marriage. Most of them are instead focused on single motherhood by choice, delaying marriage for career, surrogacy, etc. Most women aren’t prepared to fight against anti-marriage, anti-child forces, and men sense from this that they aren’t serious about marriage as it really is: a self-sacrificial commitment requiring female and male natures.

Most young, unmarried women take on the priorities of the culture: animal rights, global warming, equal pay, abortion rights, gun control, higher taxes, single payer healthcare, public schools, etc. But most know very little about how to prepare themselves for a husband, or prepare themselves to provide for their children.