The relation to private marriage contracts is a bit tangential, but there is one element of some prenuptial agreements that I’d like to see become a standard element of the marriage institution. I think it would be much more sensible if divorce settlements in cases where only one spouse is an income earner were capped at some level based on costs of living, in such a way that nobody would be able to become rich by marrying a rich person and then divorcing them.
I’ve spoken to a number of people who’ve argued that some rich people do some really reprehensible things in their marriages, for which they deserve to be punished, and their spouses compensated. But punishing wrongdoing by way of monetary transfer to the wronged parties creates a perverse incentive whereby people benefit from finding a sufficiently wealthy person to be wronged by. If people are given huge monetary incentives to marry wealthy people even if they don’t expect the marriages to last, then it’s unsurprising if a lot of people enter into marriages with wealthy people without worrying a great deal about whether or not they want to spend their life with the other person; they come out ahead either way.
The relation to private marriage contracts is a bit tangential, but there is one element of some prenuptial agreements that I’d like to see become a standard element of the marriage institution. I think it would be much more sensible if divorce settlements in cases where only one spouse is an income earner were capped at some level based on costs of living, in such a way that nobody would be able to become rich by marrying a rich person and then divorcing them.
I’ve spoken to a number of people who’ve argued that some rich people do some really reprehensible things in their marriages, for which they deserve to be punished, and their spouses compensated. But punishing wrongdoing by way of monetary transfer to the wronged parties creates a perverse incentive whereby people benefit from finding a sufficiently wealthy person to be wronged by. If people are given huge monetary incentives to marry wealthy people even if they don’t expect the marriages to last, then it’s unsurprising if a lot of people enter into marriages with wealthy people without worrying a great deal about whether or not they want to spend their life with the other person; they come out ahead either way.