Kids, Custody, and Alimony
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Kids, Custody, and Alimony
EMILY CHUUN (2011)
Section 4320(g) recognizes the overriding public policy concern
for the welfare of the parties' minor children.'
The strides made by women toward social and legal equality have impacted
not only marriage and family, but also the legal treatment of divorce and
the awarding of alimony.2 So far as economics are concerned, the projects
of no-fault divorce emphasize the division of the marital assets to enable
each spouse to go his or her separate way, with alimony meant to provide
supplementary, temporary, rehabilitative assistance.3 Up to a point.
In any judgment decreeing the dissolution of a marriage or a legal separation of
the parties, the court may order a party to pay for the support of the other party
any amount, and for such period of time, as the court may deem just and reasonable
having regard for the circumstances of the respective parties, including the duration
of the marriage, and the ability of the supported spouse to engage in gainful
I. William P. Hogoboom & Donald B. King, California Practice Guide: Family
Law § 6:916 (Rutter Group). [PH Note: Emily's sources have been updated through December
2014. Also see PH Note at the conclusion of her essay.]
2. Before the emergence of no-fault divorce, the wife usually sacrificed her career
in order to take on the responsibilities of homemaking and childrearing full-time, while
today, women increasingly are engaged in professional careers. In the event of divorce,
the ex-husband was often required to continue supporting his ex-wife until death or her
remarriage, on the assumption she could not-and the expectation she would not-become
self-supporting. Today, women, both married and single, increasingly are engaged in professional
careers and capable of self-reliance. See Comment (Nicole M. Catanzarite), A Commendable
Goal: Public Policy and the Fate of Spousal Support After 1996, 31 Loyola-L.A. L. Rev.
1387, 1387-95 (1998).
3. See id. at 1392-93 (noting that feminists in the 1960s and 1970s, many of whom
criticized alimony awards for divorcing wives, saw little problem with transitional, or
rehabilitative, alimony as a way of assisting women in the transition from housewife working
woman without strapping her to an unsavory stereotype).](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/contli22&div=23&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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