We have been receiving many emails from various members willing to volunteer for the Second Wives Club. Thank you for all your offers of help. I am compiling a database, and shortly we will have our own blog on the Florida Alimony Reform web site where we will be able to organize ourselves as a group and establish goals and timelines. While the name of our committee is the Second Wives Club, by no means is this group limited to second wives of alimony payers. I am not a second wife, although I want to be. 

Due to our current laws in Florida, I refuse to risk my assets and income as potential fodder for my boyfriend's alimony. Having personally survived a difficult marriage and divorce, it is nice to finally have someone I am truly compatible with, yet I find it too risky to marry him for financial reasons. This makes me extremely sad and frustrated. My boyfriend's former wife is a permanent alimony recipient with a college education and lots of work experience in large companies, but chooses not to have a full time career.

Having said that, the Second Wives Club is open to any partner or spouse of an alimony payer from anywhere in the United States, especially Florida of course, who believes that the current alimony laws are damaging, destructive, anti-family, and anti-marriage. I encourage folks from other states to join, and I will encourage our members to join and support Second Wives or Partners Clubs in other states that are also in the process of alimony reform. We need to support each other, and we need to get the word out that permanent alimony is not only a serious problem for the permanent alimony payer, but for everyone involved with that person, including the children of the former couple. 

While the current laws are gender neutral, 95% of alimony is paid from male to female, so we encourage everyone to join our group who believes that the current laws are insulting to women because they assume women are dependent on men and cannot fend for themselves. While I am not a bra-burning feminist, I am a woman of 2012 and believe the idea that I am totally dependent on a man is from my grandmother's generation. Heck, even then, my grandmother and her peers went to work during WWII to support the war effort. There is no reason in our world today why women should be assumed helpless and destined to be on the bread lines without permanent alimony. 

I do believe that durational alimony is often necessary and appropriate to transition from married to single life, especially when one person has had the luxury of being a stay-at-home parent and has been out of the workforce for some time. And yes, having the ability to stay at home and raise a family is indeed a luxury, and not an excuse to collect an alimony check for life.

In each weekly FAR newsletter, I plan on discussing a variety of topics as to how and why permanent alimony is destructive in general. Feel free to email me your experiences and I can include them (anonymously of course). I read some emails and I am deeply saddened by some of the stories I read. All the while Mr. Manz of the FL Bar believes we are "enjoying" the most progressive laws in the country. This week, I would like to feature the concept that for a permanent alimony payer, the primary legal obligation is the ex-spouse, a healthy, able-bodied adult, who either chooses not to work because they get a legal pass at self-sufficiency or only works part-time because they know they will collect an alimony check for life. All the while, some of these alimony payers are not in the position to help an 18-year-old child, who according to the law, is supposed to be independent and self-sufficient. 

I think back to the time when I was 18, and although I worked part-time for gasoline, entertainment, clothing, etc. when I was a full-time college student, I was anything but self-sufficient. If my father had to pay my mother large sums of money every month in permanent alimony and couldn't help me with major expenses like tuition and housing, what would I have done? My student loans would have been quintupled at the very least. Why is it expected that an 18-year old at the beginning of their college career without a profession should be self-sufficient, but an able bodied adult often with a history of work experience and potentially a college education is not expected to be self-sufficient? With permanent alimony, there are many alimony payers that cannot help their children the way they would like, and it is the children who suffer. Although an 18 year old is technically not a minor, if one is the parent of a college student, that parent has the absolute right to make the child/ren their primary financial responsibility without the state stepping in and telling them otherwise.

Debbie Leff Israel

Committee Leader - Second Wives Club - Florida

secondwivesclubfl@gmail.com

"The voice of the female casualties of permanent alimony."

Florida Alimony Reform

www.floridaalimonyreform.com

 "Remember, if we let up, we lose!"