Recently
we heard Angelia Jolly splitting from her husband Brad Pitt, using the term “irreconcilable
differences,” And I find whole media and a bunch of feminist bloggers going
wild over writing about it. “Is this a correct step when you have half a dozen
kids? “, “Reason revealed, Brad is having an EXTRA marital affair.” Many more
verdicts came out when the crowd saw a celebrity couple getting divorced. While
some of them appreciated this step for coming out of a disturbing marriage.
Most people scoff them off for
using a new-age approach to what is
necessarily a dark, painful life event, a divorce.
The
demise of a long relationship is really a sad step and its effect on kids and
other family member is obviously a negative thing. But I feel with time we have
advanced over each and every aspect of living
except separation from a life partner. As
our thinking and lifestyles are getting
cutting-age, people are getting open in every matter. They are open in
expressing their life choices. Many of them are open about expressing their
love (even in public). Some are even candid about their homosexual nature. But
we are still old fashioned about seeing divorces. We have accepted “love
marriage” as a modern marriage institution yet we are closed about seeing the
brighter side of separation in most of the cases.
Divorce
is intrinsically hard and I have no doubt on it. But our cultural beliefs and
attitudes make it even harder than it needs to be. We often consider the wife
bad charactered and rebellious if she is asking for it. We assume the husband
careless and freaky if he wants a separation. Guilt, shame and a sense of
failure significantly raise the emotional cost of divorce, and that’s why many
of the women and men are forced to carry an unhappy and abusive relationship
even today. Still, the divorce rate in our country is low. I don’t think this
is because everything is brighter in marriages here. Interestingly, divorces
granted by the family courts increased in metro cities in last few years. But
why this disparity, why marriages have turned more fragile in last five or so
years, still not breaking into pieces easily?
The
obvious reason is the high cost of divorce, particularly for the wife. Gone are
the days when husbands used to buy property/house in the names of their wives.
Now everything is his asset and a wife gets very less for living her further
life. Though there isn't a fixed formula to quantify the alimony amount,
generally it is in the range of one-fifth
to one-third of the gross earnings of the
spouse who has to pay alimony. This is worse in the case of non-working women. Such women may have nowhere to go after
divorce, except to her parents’ place where too
she is unwanted, particularly by her brothers, who are claimants to paternal
property. The flip side of the coin is
wives misusing divorce laws for getting a share
in husbands’ property. Court trials which are mostly biased towards wives leave very less room for husbands to prove them
innocent in the matter. And divorce being a costly affair, from hiring a lawyer
to courts proceedings, goes as a painful business than relieving.
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