I kmow a couple who split but the husband stayed in the home (in the basement) for financial reasons. That would be more palatable to me than sticking it out as a true married couple. I think my contempt and resentment would be far too obvious.
This is interesting to me. I'm not near a divorce right now, but we own a two family house and anytime I'm wicked pissed at dh, I always think how one of us would move downstairs if we ever did divorce and at least the kids would be impacted a bit less. Same house etc.
But I know not everyone has this "luxury" and I can't imagine being in the position the overseas couples face with all the added complications in an already complicated situation (divorce).
Lol! My mother's friend and husband lived like this for probably a decade and they were happily married (perhaps because of this?). They had 3 boys and she was fed up cleaning up after them, so when their tenants moved out, she moved into the other unit and the husband and boys stayed in their unit. I think it's a better idea for not so harmonious times, although what I always think about in these mostly split situations is that it's all good until one or both parents gets serious with someone else. That's when I see it becoming a bit untenable.
I see this a lot in military marriages too, albeit we have a higher divorce rate than the general public anyway. But it's a huge group of people in which the women have mostly left their careers behind, even if they have a job, and moved from home as a trailing spouse. It's so difficult to imagine a custody arrangement that isn't terrible for the kids if the wife wants to move back home but the husband will continue to be stationed God-knows-where for 10-15 more years. (Yes, I know there are females servicemembers and same-sex couples in the military, but in reality the vast, vast majority are still heterosexual couples with the husband in active duty, so I used that in my example for the sake of simplicity.)
I don't spend much time on the base, but I've wondered how it is for military spouses with children living on bases far from home. So one's spouse is gone off on tour for months at a time and when they come back, I imagine that stay-home spouse doesn't get much of a break because, well, that person just got back from duty. That is not as stressful as many of the other issues military families face, but it must put stress on the marriage? Is the military community as helpful as it sounds on Armed Forces radio? I'm always jealous when I listen in the mornings and hear how close-knit the community sounds.
A lot of the spouses are really supportive. I'm fortunate in that I have a group of friends who are always willing to help with my kids, bring each other dinner, etc. And the military offers dinners and childcare for free to deployed spouses monthly or biweekly. But it's still really hard and redeployment is tough, because the service member needs down time too, and the kids miss him like crazy so they want to be all over him. The spouse is so used to doing things alone that it can be hard to let the member back in to the family routine, and then he feels like an outsider which breeds resentment on both sides.
It's not easy. There's a reason the divorce rate in the military is about 65%.
Is separation not an option? If there are reasons he wouldn't want to divorce for looks or finances, they could still figure out how to better run their lives as singles.
This is 100% true here in HK. At this point it's mostly funny for me and my friends to see our SOs just get stormed whenever we go out. But if I was less secure in my marriage it would be a lot less funny and more terrifying.
Also, I've read two decent novels that deal with these subjects recently. The Expatriates by Janice Y.K. Lee and Hausfrau by Jill Alexander Essbaum.
I have always heard that there is a high rate of infidelity and divorce amongst expats who get assigned to Asia. My husband works for a worldwide company with big offices in Hong Kong and Singapore and every non Asian coworker he has is married to an Asian woman and many were married before and divorced after moving to HK or Singapore.
Our office in KL has one non-Asian married to an Asian girl. He was engaged when he moved but broke it off shortly after.
The other guys are all in 10+ year marriages to the same western women, although two of them lived on different continents from their spouses--one for medical reasons and the other idk, because of the kids school maybe? One spouse being in Asia and the other being back home in Australia/UK/Africa/wherever with the kids after giving up on the location was really not all common at all.
My ILs first announced their divorce when dh was 7. They were stationed in Germany at the time. However, they did not actually separate until dh was 13. That was after 2 more locations and several more affairs. I always assumed MIL stayed for those additional years because she wasnt near family and didn't have a good support system. FIL can be a dick and he treats his current wife crappy imo. I often think about how hard it had to be for MIL to be stuck with FIL around the world from her family with two young children. I believe she left him as soon as she was able to support herself and her family was within driving distance.
I have always heard that there is a high rate of infidelity and divorce amongst expats who get assigned to Asia. My husband works for a worldwide company with big offices in Hong Kong and Singapore and every non Asian coworker he has is married to an Asian woman and many were married before and divorced after moving to HK or Singapore.
Our office in KL has one non-Asian married to an Asian girl. He was engaged when he moved but broke it off shortly after.
The other guys are all in 10+ year marriages to the same western women, although two of them lived on different continents from their spouses--one for medical reasons and the other idk, because of the kids school maybe? One spouse being in Asia and the other being back home in Australia/UK/Africa/wherever with the kids after giving up on the location was really not all common at all.
#When American Cynthia Woods found out that her husband, an executive at a multinational company, would be posted to Chengdu, China, in 2008, she embraced the adventure, conducting exhaustive research on the city, schools for the couple’s three boys, and life overall in China.
“I was just so happy,” says Ms. Woods.
But a few days into the move, she realized her marriage was over.
Within two weeks, the family moved back to the U.S., her husband’s assignment cut short, Ms. Woods says. “My oldest was 18 and had a girlfriend who was an expat and had moved back to Singapore. It was crushing. I still carry the guilt to this day that I took him away from her. But I knew for my own sanity I had to get us out of there. I thought, if I got us out, the family would heal.”
It’s virtually impossible, of course, to understand the causes of marital breakups, especially in the complicated world of expats. But a new study has found that expat life can exacerbate existing problems in a marriage, and bring in new tensions that can cause expat marriages to fray and break.
Expat scholar Yvonne McNulty, an associate faculty member at SIM University in Singapore, found in her study, “Till Stress Do Us Part: The Causes and Consequences of Expatriate Divorce,” to be published in June in the Journal of Global Mobility, that expat life brings its own form of marriage stressors. Dr. McNulty studied 38 expat divorces in 27 countries and found a range of issues: trailing spouses who may find themselves with a loss of identity after a move; a lack of a longtime community that might bolster a struggling couple; and long work hours mixed in with extensive travel that pulls couples apart.
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Ironically, Dr. McNulty says, those stresses might not translate to a higher divorce rate for expats, since spouses far from home might be more inclined to stay longer in a bad situation. But when couples do break up the results are far more serious, she says, with international battles over child custody, confusion over which country has jurisdiction over the divorce, and huge relocation costs for companies that have sent entire families overseas.
One element that can intensify problems, she says, is the expat community itself, which can “become almost like a toxic influence on a marriage.”
“It’s like a groupthink attitude. If one or two individuals are engaging in extramarital affairs the men tend to say, that gives me permission to do it.” Some common expat destinations, particularly Asia and the Middle East, are “notorious for changing a marriage,” Dr. McNulty says.
“The way a lot of women described it was that their husbands were a big fish in a small pond,” says Dr. McNulty. “Western men are considered a prize catch, and women are ruthless in how they pursue them.”
READ MORE: After a Divorce, a Longterm Expat in Istanbul Falls in Love With the City
Read More: Expats in Love: Top Countries for Romance and Happiness
American John Lackey, who has lived abroad since 1999, says that one tradition in his former company in Singapore was to take the new hires – all male – to a place called Orchard Towers, which was known for its massage parlors, sex shops and discos.
For Mr. Lackey and his ex-wife, though, work stress and travel seem to have caused the breaking point. Mr. Lackey, an American who now holds a Singaporean passport, puts the blame on his constant travel for his divorce from his Malaysian-born wife.
For instance, during the first six months that the couple lived in Bangalore, Mr. Lackey says he was on the road 163 days. “I made the effort to take the family with me,” he says, “but I think it was rough on them.”
The couple had a very different sense of how to live their lives. “I would travel and get home on the weekend and be exhausted. She would say, ‘Let’s go to the market.’ I would say, ‘You have a driver, a maid, a cook, a gardener. Why not do it during the week?’ It just started to grind on us, take a toll,” he says. Reached by email for a comment, Mr. Lackey’s ex-wife declined to be interviewed.
Over a five-year period, the couple moved from Singapore to Hong Kong, to India, back to Singapore, and then to China, he says. “I think the strain and stress of all the moves and the travel just became too much.”
Another problem is social isolation. Most expat couples are far removed from any kind of setting – family, friends, communities – that might have bolstered a struggling marriage. Dr. McNulty says that in her research, “one of the strongest things that came out was the lack of role models or mentors” for troubled marriages. Many of the women she surveyed said to her, “If we had been home, my parents, his parents, his brother would have pulled him up by the scruff of his neck and said, ‘What are you doing?’”
In addition, the expat community is not always willing to get involved. “When you’ve got marital problems, the other expat wives think you have a disease, and they shun you,” Dr. McNulty says.
The situation becomes more complicated when one member of the couple is an expat and other is living in a home country.
Monika Fischer, a Czech who married a German man, says that living in Germany put stresses on the marriage. The Germans she encountered when the couple lived in northern Germany were not very warm or welcoming, and that made her far too dependent on her husband for her social contact. “I didn’t have anybody else but him,” says Ms. Fischer, 56, who now lives in Zurich. “For him, it became too much.” Ms. Fischer’s ex-husband did not respond to emails seeking a response.
When Ms. Fischer’s husband got a job offer in Singapore, they both leapt at the opportunity to leave Germany, despite their realization that the marriage was already struggling there. “To have a totally new experience in a totally different culture – maybe this will turn us around and change the situation,” she thought at the time.
Instead, her husband lost his job after the family had lived in Singapore for three years. With the high cost of housing in Singapore and no work, Ms. Fischer says they didn’t even have the money to fly the family of five 13,000 kilometers home.
The effects of expat divorce can be more powerful than other divorces too, says Dr. McNulty. Many countries don’t allow married couples to have a joint bank account, so when the marriage breaks up the spouse, often female, may be cut off from support with no access to money.
One English woman had moved with her husband, also British, to Ghana. There, she says, she learned that it was common for men to have mistresses. The woman says she loved living in Africa, which gave her a chance to travel and meet new friends. “I think it’s possible now that’s why I didn’t notice what was going on,” she says. Finally, her husband admitted he had been having an affair for two years and that he wanted her to leave. She was back in England within a week of learning the news.
“I didn’t have anybody there to stay for,” she says. “As much as I didn’t want to come home to my family, I kind of needed my family.”
Child custody issues are also far more complicated in an expat situation, says Dr. McNulty. While the Hague Convention of 1980 requires that children remain in the country where custody is disputed, many Middle Eastern countries are not members of the convention. In many cases then, the father will automatically be awarded custody of the children.
Bente Sternberg, a family therapist living in Ho Chi Min City, Vietnam, agrees that custody issues are particularly difficult with expat couples who may be accustomed to moving to a new country every three years. “One partner may be moving and his next assignment might be from Vietnam to Africa. Meanwhile, the wife hasn’t lived in her home country for 12 years. It’s not this simple thing of ‘I’ll return home,’ wherever home may feel like.”
Dr. McNulty interviewed one woman in Singapore whose children have American passports. After she was divorced, she moved with them to the States, only to have to return to Singapore because her ex-husband invoked the Hague Convention. “She’s living every expat woman’s worse nightmare,” she says.
Overall, Dr. McNulty says, companies are not set up to support a trailing spouse in an expat assignment. “There’s the assumption that everything is going to go right, but there is no safety net.”
Monika Fischer says she now wonders whether she should have done things differently. “If you live abroad and your relationship breaks apart, you lose much more than just the partner. It’s everything – because you went that far for him.”
Oh man, I nodded to so much of this article. Returning to the US from London was so good for or marriage. We were recently presented with the opportunity to go back to London, and of course in a perfect world, I'd love to go back. But I was able to keep my job and work remotely since it was short term (though I still feel like it adversely impacted my work), if we went back for years, that couldn't happen. I was growing more and more resentful about my career going on the backburner. And expat life was stressful. And I'm still pissed that finding childcare fell squarely on my shoulders even though it was his job causing us to need childcare in London with only a couple weeks' notice. But back to my point, I confessed that I had reservations about going back, and DH confessed that he did too, and I couldn't believe how relieved we were to be on the same page about staying here. But yeah, all of this makes sense. And I see these stories (miserable marriages and they feel trapped because they are expats with children) over and over in expat forums.
But he made sure that door to London was still open to us later on, you know, in case Trump gets elected. :ducks:
One of my best friends married a man and moved to his home country. They have kids and she loves it and wants her kids to be raised there. But she wouldn't have permanent status until she has lived there 10 years. She has largely been unhappy for at least 7 years. Later this year she will hit 10 years and not coincidentally is finally talking about a divorce. It was a sad way to live, that's for sure. But she made a calculated choice for the long-term future of both herself and her kids.
I want to feel for this woman, but still her self-pity turns me off a bit. If you have a cold, just rest. Tell your H that you can't prepare food that day; suggest they order take-out.
She seems to over-rely on her marriage for happiness, or at least blame it for her unhappiness. If she's bitter and resentful toward him (and she sounds like she has every reason to be), but she doesn't want to divorce, can't she turn to other things? She may not be able to work, but she can volunteer, she can take classes, heck, she can hang out in bars after the kids go to bed. Whatever works to keep her feeling alive.
Personally, I can relate to not having a support system. We've moved long-distance twice, I SAH now, we've had years when we didn't know who to put - besides each other - as an emergency contact on school forms and such, and we've been through rough periods adjusting to this. But never would I see these as reasons to put myself on the back burner forever.
I feel sad for her, but if she were my friend I would counsel her to move into the guest bedroom and stop pretending for the kids. Just be real. Her kids would get more out of seeing her struggle to find new avenues for herself than witnessing her suppress everything "for their sake."
One of my best friends married a man and moved to his home country. They have kids and she loves it and wants her kids to be raised there. But she wouldn't have permanent status until she has lived there 10 years. She has largely been unhappy for at least 7 years. Later this year she will hit 10 years and not coincidentally is finally talking about a divorce. It was a sad way to live, that's for sure. But she made a calculated choice for the long-term future of both herself and her kids.
I've anecdotally seen the 7-10 yr mark to be when expats break. They've moved a couple of times, have had their few support systems move away a couple of times by then....
I want to feel for this woman, but still her self-pity turns me off a bit. If you have a cold, just rest. Tell your H that you can't prepare food that day; suggest they order take-out.
She seems to over-rely on her marriage for happiness, or at least blame it for her unhappiness. If she's bitter and resentful toward him (and she sounds like she has every reason to be), but she doesn't want to divorce, can't she turn to other things? She may not be able to work, but she can volunteer, she can take classes, heck, she can hang out in bars after the kids go to bed. Whatever works to keep her feeling alive.
Personally, I can relate to not having a support system. We've moved long-distance twice, I SAH now, we've had years when we didn't know who to put - besides each other - as an emergency contact on school forms and such, and we've been through rough periods adjusting to this. But never would I see these as reasons to put myself on the back burner forever.
I feel sad for her, but if she were my friend I would counsel her to move into the guest bedroom and stop pretending for the kids. Just be real. Her kids would get more out of seeing her struggle to find new avenues for herself than witnessing her suppress everything "for their sake."
With some visas you can't volunteer and if you are in a country where your language is not taught, then classes may not be available. Your only friend may be expats who tend to move a lot, so you may not have close ones. It's a lot harder to make a life outside your marriage in some countries.
Dr. McNulty interviewed one woman in Singapore whose children have American passports. After she was divorced, she moved with them to the States, only to have to return to Singapore because her ex-husband invoked the Hague Convention. “She’s living every expat woman’s worse nightmare,” she says.
Ugh, this whole thread reminds me I need to look into getting a legal document in place before hopping on the baby train.
I have seen multiple Americans stuck in Norway because their relationship went to shit and they couldn't take the kids back to the USA. So now they're stuck, and miserable. I want this shit signed in blood before there's even a baby thought of; I get to make the big decisions.
I don't even know what I'm looking for. A pre-nup for kids? That isn't even a thing!
Dr. McNulty interviewed one woman in Singapore whose children have American passports. After she was divorced, she moved with them to the States, only to have to return to Singapore because her ex-husband invoked the Hague Convention. “She’s living every expat woman’s worse nightmare,” she says.
Ugh, this whole thread reminds me I need to look into getting a legal document in place before hopping on the baby train.
I have seen multiple Americans stuck in Norway because their relationship went to shit and they couldn't take the kids back to the USA. So now they're stuck, and miserable. I want this shit signed in blood before there's even a baby thought of; I get to make the big decisions.
I don't even know what I'm looking for. A pre-nup for kids? That isn't even a thing!
Would you want to marry and have children with someone who was willing to sign away his rights to make decisions about their future?
Ugh, this whole thread reminds me I need to look into getting a legal document in place before hopping on the baby train.
I have seen multiple Americans stuck in Norway because their relationship went to shit and they couldn't take the kids back to the USA. So now they're stuck, and miserable. I want this shit signed in blood before there's even a baby thought of; I get to make the big decisions.
I don't even know what I'm looking for. A pre-nup for kids? That isn't even a thing!
Would you want to marry and have children with someone who was willing to sign away his rights to make decisions about their future?
I could see it though it doesn't sound awesome. If the primary caregiver is the foreigner and is without familial support and would need to move back to the home country to have any sort of satisfying life, then you get trapped. At least that is what happened to a friend of mine. She didn't want her children getting raised by a nanny if she left because her husband was a workaholic and couldn't do it, and he wouldn't let her take them back to the States to live. So she had to stay and live in a country she hates and can communicate ok in, but everything is hard now that she lives in her own apartment with the children and has to handle the German on her own: insurance, legal stuff, rental issues..... We, her friends, help but we know we aren't her first choice. She wants to go home.
Even with guardianship, should anything have happened to us yesterday, we had a bunch of legal hoops to jump through to get the German gov't to allow our children to be raised by friends back in America. The court says they are German and we had to provide a million reasons why the German gov't shouldn't keep them with family here.
Would you want to marry and have children with someone who was willing to sign away his rights to make decisions about their future?
I could see it though it doesn't sound awesome. If the primary caregiver is the foreigner and is without familial support and would need to move back to the home country to have any sort of satisfying life, then you get trapped. At least that is what happened to a friend of mine. She didn't want her children getting raised by a nanny if she left because her husband was a workaholic and couldn't do it, and he wouldn't let her take them back to the States to live. So she had to stay and live in a country she hates and can communicate ok in, but everything is hard now that she lives in her own apartment with the children and has to handle the German on her own: insurance, legal stuff, rental issues..... We, her friends, help but we know we aren't her first choice. She wants to go home.
Even with guardianship, should anything have happened to us yesterday, we had a bunch of legal hoops to jump through to get the German gov't to allow our children to be raised by friends back in America. The court says they are German and we had to provide a million reasons why the German gov't shouldn't keep them with family here.
Our office in KL has one non-Asian married to an Asian girl. He was engaged when he moved but broke it off shortly after.
The other guys are all in 10+ year marriages to the same western women, although two of them lived on different continents from their spouses--one for medical reasons and the other idk, because of the kids school maybe? One spouse being in Asia and the other being back home in Australia/UK/Africa/wherever with the kids after giving up on the location was really not all common at all.
Asian woman.
Thanks. No idea why I tend to use girl for singular and woman for plural, although it I should probably stop doing that. Ironically, the ethnically Chinese person is one of my best friends. I've only ever even met one of the others.
Post by rupertpenny on Mar 21, 2016 9:06:44 GMT -5
I just want to clarify that I don't think Asian women are home wreckers on a mission to steal expat men from loving families. Far from it, I doubt anyone ever sets out to meet people who are already partnered. And western men have a huge hand in the dynamic here as many completely fetishize Asian women. My single friends who are not Chinese have trouble even getting a guy to glance in their general direction. It's a very, very weird dynamic overall.
Dr. McNulty interviewed one woman in Singapore whose children have American passports. After she was divorced, she moved with them to the States, only to have to return to Singapore because her ex-husband invoked the Hague Convention. “She’s living every expat woman’s worse nightmare,” she says.
Ugh, this whole thread reminds me I need to look into getting a legal document in place before hopping on the baby train.
I have seen multiple Americans stuck in Norway because their relationship went to shit and they couldn't take the kids back to the USA. So now they're stuck, and miserable. I want this shit signed in blood before there's even a baby thought of; I get to make the big decisions.
I don't even know what I'm looking for. A pre-nup for kids? That isn't even a thing!
At the end of the day when it comes to custody issues its up to a judge, and judges very, very rarely place kids who are citizens of the country where they are living into the custody of a non-citizen parent who is leaving the country. Do you plan to go back to Norway?
I just want to clarify that I don't think Asian women are home wreckers on a mission to steal expat men from loving families. Far from it, I doubt anyone ever sets out to meet people who are already partnered. And western men have a huge hand in the dynamic here as many completely fetishize Asian women. My single friends who are not Chinese have trouble even getting a guy to glance in their general direction. It's a very, very weird dynamic overall.
I agree and hope my earlier post didn't come across that way
I want to feel for this woman, but still her self-pity turns me off a bit. If you have a cold, just rest. Tell your H that you can't prepare food that day; suggest they order take-out.
She seems to over-rely on her marriage for happiness, or at least blame it for her unhappiness. If she's bitter and resentful toward him (and she sounds like she has every reason to be), but she doesn't want to divorce, can't she turn to other things? She may not be able to work, but she can volunteer, she can take classes, heck, she can hang out in bars after the kids go to bed. Whatever works to keep her feeling alive.
Personally, I can relate to not having a support system. We've moved long-distance twice, I SAH now, we've had years when we didn't know who to put - besides each other - as an emergency contact on school forms and such, and we've been through rough periods adjusting to this. But never would I see these as reasons to put myself on the back burner forever.
I feel sad for her, but if she were my friend I would counsel her to move into the guest bedroom and stop pretending for the kids. Just be real. Her kids would get more out of seeing her struggle to find new avenues for herself than witnessing her suppress everything "for their sake."
It depends on where she lives. In some countries she may not be able to have a life outside of the home. Some expat communities are very isolated and you can really only be friends with other expats. There aren't volunteer opportunities or bars to hang out in. In some countries women aren't even allowed to drive.
Ugh, this whole thread reminds me I need to look into getting a legal document in place before hopping on the baby train.
I have seen multiple Americans stuck in Norway because their relationship went to shit and they couldn't take the kids back to the USA. So now they're stuck, and miserable. I want this shit signed in blood before there's even a baby thought of; I get to make the big decisions.
I don't even know what I'm looking for. A pre-nup for kids? That isn't even a thing!
At the end of the day when it comes to custody issues its up to a judge, and judges very, very rarely place kids who are citizens of the country where they are living into the custody of a non-citizen parent who is leaving the country. Do you plan to go back to Norway?
No idea if we'll move back, maybe one day when we have kids.
That's another reason I view Norway's restriction on dual citizenship as an outright human rights violation. An immigrant parent has no chance against the local parent. Everybody loses, for some bullshit philosophical reason that only they adhere to (well, not only-only).
Ugh, this whole thread reminds me I need to look into getting a legal document in place before hopping on the baby train.
I have seen multiple Americans stuck in Norway because their relationship went to shit and they couldn't take the kids back to the USA. So now they're stuck, and miserable. I want this shit signed in blood before there's even a baby thought of; I get to make the big decisions.
I don't even know what I'm looking for. A pre-nup for kids? That isn't even a thing!
Would you want to marry and have children with someone who was willing to sign away his rights to make decisions about their future?
I don't really get your question. I just want to protect myself and my future kid(s), particularly if we move [back] to a place with a known history of parents essentially being held hostage if they want to see their kids.
Would you want to marry and have children with someone who was willing to sign away his rights to make decisions about their future?
I don't really get your question. I just want to protect myself and my future kid(s), particularly if we move [back] to a place with a known history of parents essentially being held hostage if they want to see their kids.
I understand that. I assume outside of the fathers that are complete assholes, that many men would also have the same concerns about being separated from their children. I don't think there are easy answers here, but signing away rights to future money is not easy in a prenup context. I would think signing away certain rights before becoming a parent to be even more difficult...and if it is was that easy I would question their commitment to wanting children in the first place. But I definitely get the concern you are expressing.
I don't really get your question. I just want to protect myself and my future kid(s), particularly if we move [back] to a place with a known history of parents essentially being held hostage if they want to see their kids.
I understand that. I assume outside of the fathers that are complete assholes, that many men would also have the same concerns about being separated from their children. I don't think there are easy answers here, but signing away rights to future money is not easy in a prenup context. I would think signing away certain rights before becoming a parent to be even more difficult...and if it is was that easy I would question their commitment to wanting children in the first place. But I definitely get the concern you are expressing.
I'm not talking about signing rights away here. I'm talking about ultimate decision making after a lot of consultation.
It could get so, so, so ugly very quickly for us. I don't have the right to live in his country, and he doesn't have the right to live in mine. We live on neutral ground at the moment, but that could one day change. Do I expect this to happen? No. But I've been around this site long enough to see so many marriages go off the rails. It could absolutely happen to us.
I see lots of couples that stay together because divorce is too expensive. I'm asked to appraise their house to look at the feasibility of selling for divorce purposes, and then they realize that they don't have enough equity, and neither makes enough $$ to live on their own AND support children. So they stay together for the sake of being able to have their kids grow up not in complete poverty.
I understand that. I assume outside of the fathers that are complete assholes, that many men would also have the same concerns about being separated from their children. I don't think there are easy answers here, but signing away rights to future money is not easy in a prenup context. I would think signing away certain rights before becoming a parent to be even more difficult...and if it is was that easy I would question their commitment to wanting children in the first place. But I definitely get the concern you are expressing.
I'm not talking about signing rights away here. I'm talking about ultimate decision making after a lot of consultation.
It could get so, so, so ugly very quickly for us. I don't have the right to live in his country, and he doesn't have the right to live in mine. We live on neutral ground at the moment, but that could one day change. Do I expect this to happen? No. But I've been around this site long enough to see so many marriages go off the rails. It could absolutely happen to us.
But legally signing over decision making rights is signing over parental rights. It's something that courts rarely allow before birth (pre-birth orders being a very narrow and limited exception) at least in the US.
I understand that. I assume outside of the fathers that are complete assholes, that many men would also have the same concerns about being separated from their children. I don't think there are easy answers here, but signing away rights to future money is not easy in a prenup context. I would think signing away certain rights before becoming a parent to be even more difficult...and if it is was that easy I would question their commitment to wanting children in the first place. But I definitely get the concern you are expressing.
I'm not talking about signing rights away here. I'm talking about ultimate decision making after a lot of consultation.
It could get so, so, so ugly very quickly for us. I don't have the right to live in his country, and he doesn't have the right to live in mine. We live on neutral ground at the moment, but that could one day change. Do I expect this to happen? No. But I've been around this site long enough to see so many marriages go off the rails. It could absolutely happen to us.
"I want this shit signed in blood before there's even a baby thought of; I get to make the big decisions."
I took that to mean signing away rights. Even if you had physical custody your spouse could have joint legal custody which I thought still gives participation in big decisions.
I understand wanting an agreement or assurances about being able to raise your child in a specific country (although it sounds like much of the roadblocks are the countries themselves). But that to me is not the same as setting out from the beginning some arrangement that you have sole decision making authority over your children.
I'm not talking about signing rights away here. I'm talking about ultimate decision making after a lot of consultation.
It could get so, so, so ugly very quickly for us. I don't have the right to live in his country, and he doesn't have the right to live in mine. We live on neutral ground at the moment, but that could one day change. Do I expect this to happen? No. But I've been around this site long enough to see so many marriages go off the rails. It could absolutely happen to us.
"I want this shit signed in blood before there's even a baby thought of; I get to make the big decisions."
I took that to mean signing away rights. Even if you had physical custody your spouse could have joint legal custody which I thought still gives participation in big decisions.
I understand wanting an agreement or assurances about being able to raise your child in a specific country (although it sounds like much of the roadblocks are the countries themselves). But that to me is not the same as setting out from the beginning some arrangement that you have sole decision making authority over your children.
yes that seemed odd to me too. I feel like sometimes people assume that only men "ruin" marriages and the woman is automatically the best person to make decisions for a child? I mean this is obviously often the case but I wouldn't say it's the definite outcome.
I just can't imagine trying to get my husband to sign away the rights to make big decisions for his unborn children, or even his now existing children in the event of a breakdown of our marriage. Why would he? what if the marriage breakdown was my fault? Both our faults equally? what if I turned into a more unstable person and he would actually BE the best person to provide the primary care for the children/make big decisions in the event of our marriage breaking down?