The best place for a woman to get divorced is England. Translation: she can steal more money from her ex-husband in the UK than anywhere else.

The article below from Forbes magazine underscores the financial danger to men of marrying nonearning and under-earning women. Despite all the proclamations of marriage as the bedrock of society, governments do everything possible to dissuade men from getting married — and this is another great example. 

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Splitsville, U.K.
Michael Freedman, Forbes – 06.19.06

London investment manager Alan Miller amassed a fortune of perhaps $60 million. But he apparently made at least one big financial mistake: He got divorced. Although Miller had been married for just 33 months, a judge awarded his ex, Melissa Miller, $9 million, including a $4.3 million town house in Chelsea and a lump-sum payment. The ruling, upheld in May by Britain’s highest court, along with another big-money case, marks a landmark tilt toward giving more to the nonearning spouse. Oh boy, potentially bad news for Paul McCartney, who announced in May he had separated from his wife of four years, Heather Mills McCartney. His 2005 tour grossed $77 million. That’s on top of four decades of royalty checks.

For years Britain’s courts favored the spouse who earned the money, typically the man. After a short marriage courts awarded the woman just enough to get her back on her feet. As a result, London divorce lawyers say, some rich American and European men in shaky marriages would move to England for a year to establish residency before filing for divorce.

But now women may find England more to their liking. The House of Lords ruling goes beyond what U.S. courts typically allow for nonearning spouses. Apart from the money needed for support, U.S. courts often split assets acquired during the marriage more or less down the middle. The Lords’ decision says a woman could receive compensation for lost wages as a result of being a homemaker as well as a share of her spouse’s future earnings. Michael Gouriet, a lawyer at Withers Worldwide, the London firm that represented Mrs. Miller, says the ruling even leaves open the possibility that an ex could lay claim to assets acquired by the spouse before the marriage began, particularly after a relatively long marriage.

Sandra Davis, a lawyer at London law firm Mishcon de Reya, which represented Princess Diana, says she has already received a call from a continental European woman who wanted to discuss moving to England. Will we also see a flock of unhappy, nonearning American women moving to England? The case law will take some time to sort out. Says Raoul Felder, a New York divorce lawyer who has represented Rudy Giuliani, “I wouldn’t go off celebrating yet if I were a woman.”

In a new article called “The Man’s No-Nonsense Divorce Primer,” I warn men about the dangers of getting married and going through a divorce. There are myths circulating right now in the press, claiming that men are more interested in marriage than men are. Don’t believe these myths.

Read the article. Hear the podcast.

Nobility Leads to Poverty

Divorce is the quickest path to financial ruin, bar none. These days, the probability is significantly high that a married man eventually will be single again, returning to the scrimping lifestyle of his younger days. This unfortunate situation exists because of stark modern realities:

• America has a 50% divorce rate, for first marriages
• Women initiate 70% of divorces, mainly to win child custody
• Women are as unfaithful as men
• Most family courts are biased towards females.

The marriage deck is stacked against the man if he earns more money than his wife—even in a two-career marriage. Alas, he enters matrimony and fatherhood from a position of weakness. Given the realities I cited above, he is statistically doomed, at the altar, to lose his marriage, his wealth, and control of his children. It behooves him, therefore, to anticipate divorce early and navigate it carefully. Better yet, he must try to avoid it altogether.

Generally speaking, men are raised to be chivalrous and noble, while, in my opinion, women are raised to be well-coiffed takers. Wonderful. Well, remember these two phrases, if you remember nothing else: 1) chivalry is benevolent sexism; 2) nobility leads to poverty.

Still, even in 2006, when women fly combat missions in Iraq, fly the space shuttle, and head major universities and corporations, it is common in affluent communities for the husband to want to be the “sole provider.” He toils all day at the office so his wife can play tennis, shop, visit her aestheticians, decorate the house, and lunch with her friends. Caution: Women with means and excessive freedom during the day are perfect infidelity partners. After all, idleness and narcissism, notwithstanding a plethora of charity activities, can lead to boredom and lasciviousness.

To the über-male husband, playing provider is a source of masculine pride, akin to wearing a badge of honor at work and the country club. Believe me: in divorce court, he will be the provider. He will rue the day he equated his manhood with his money. Divorce is a zero-sum game: lawyers and wives win.

Four Stages of Divorce

The four stages of divorce: pre-divorce, divorce, post-divorce, and dating:

1. Dating? Why is dating in this list, and why is it last in the list? It’s last to get your attention. It’s in the list because, during dating, you can tell what kind of divorce adversary your woman is likely to be. Usually, you are blind to or ignore critical information during the dating stage—such as when your woman refuses to buy you dinner or pay her own way on a vacation. And, because of this lapse, you will sit one day in family court, head in hands, heart in stomach as you hear the judge enumerate everything you will lose.
2. When all marital intimacy and communication irrevocably deteriorate, you are in pre-divorce. Rather than passively await your wife to divorce you, meet with loyal accounting and legal professionals to prepare for the worst. Sun-Tzu would approve this strategy.
3. During the divorce, minimize the war rhetoric. It’s going to be a long, tough, sad, expensive slog. Excessive emotions only enrich the lawyers and hurt the children. This is easy to say and difficult to execute, but it’s accurate. Cease viewing your ex-wife-to-be as your wife. She is now your adversary. She is looking out for herself, not for you. Nobility leads to poverty. Remember?
4. In post-divorce, take inventory and venture out slowly with new romances—the last thing you want or need is a repeat of the past. Solidify your relationship with your children—divorce’s biggest losers; counter your ex-wife’s anti-father poisoning tactics. Work diligently to understand yourself and choice of first wife—as well as the real reason your marriage failed. Remember: The divorce rate for second marriages is about 65% because people are:

• Likely to repeat first-marriage mistakes
• Challenged with money, unhappy children, and bitter ex-spouses
• Impatient with new, complex family situations.

No-Nonsense Bottom Line

By accepting only a woman who is your peer, you will minimize games, the likelihood of a future broken home, and financial ruin. Women who demand chivalry and nobility are just aching to kick your assets and take your kids. If you prefer “entitled” women, prepare for your next divorce. Happy hunting.

About the Author

Marc H. Rudov is an investment banker and business consultant residing in Silicon Valley, CA. He is the author of the book, The Man’s No-Nonsense Guide to Women: How to Succeed in Romance on Planet Earth^TM (ISBN 0974501719), and 19 articles.

Rudov’s book, articles, blog, and podcasts are available at http://www.thenononsenseman.com/.

Copyright ©2006 by Marc H. Rudov. All rights reserved.

Betrothed women are exhibiting the wanton, unrestrained behavior once ascribed solely to men celebrating the end of bachelorhood. Moreover, they are exposing themselves and erasing boundaries in ways men never did. Future brides, though, are not alone in their propensity to “MissBehave.” We are seeing raucous female behavior across the spectrum from teenage girls, college girls, and adult women—single and married. Alas, this trend exacerbates the double standard that negatively affects men.

Read the entire article. Listen to the podcast.

Rampant MissBehaving

In the past week, I read two uncannily similar articles about a growing American trend: unruly fiancées. Betrothed women are exhibiting the wanton, unrestrained behavior once ascribed solely to men celebrating the end of bachelorhood. Moreover, they are exposing themselves and erasing boundaries in ways men never did. Future brides, though, are not alone in their propensity to “MissBehave.” We are seeing raucous female behavior across the spectrum from teenage girls, college girls, and adult women—single and married. Alas, this trend exacerbates the double standard that negatively affects men.

In a piece from FoxNews.com entitled “Brides Gone Wild, Grooms Gone Mild,” posted on May 31, 2006, C. Spencer Beggs wrote that women are trekking in droves to Las Vegas for premarital romps and excessive binging on alcohol. Here is a representative quote from Beggs’s article: “It was a blast,” Margie Parsons, of Huber Heights, Ohio, said of her bachelorette party at a strip club. “I got handcuffed to the stage and two women gave me a lap dance.” Nice.

“What happens in Las Vegas stays in Las Vegas” is a popular commercial mantra that must be a source of frustration to the bride-to-be with no boundaries and a penchant for exhibitionism. So, after making a jackass of herself in Sin City, why not continue the insanity on her wedding day?

On June 2, 2006, the Wall Street Journal printed Jon Weinbach’s article, “Brides Gone Wild,” about women hiring photographers and videographers to immortalize them in their bras and panties, just before donning their wedding dresses. Weinbach regales us about a male photog snapping pix of Alison and her 12 bridesmaids in their underwear. Huh? Mrs. Brettschneider, Alison’s mother-in-law from tony Larchmont, NY, reviewed the proofs and deemed a few images inappropriate for public consumption, including one of Alison showing her G-string and back tattoo. “My in-laws weren’t too happy about that,” says the bride, “but it was such a cool shot.” Cool? Mrs. Brettschneider even had to admonish Alison that eventually her future kids would see those shots. Duh. Why didn’t the 29-year-old bride realize this? And, where was the groom? Was he too brainwashed to join in his mortified mother’s rightful objection?

MissBehaving starts young. Look no further than YouTube.com, a global video-viewing phenomenon. This Website allows everyone and anyone to upload videos for the whole world to see. YouTube viewers are watching 50 million videos per day—from Hollywood movie trailers to rock-group music videos to wacky home movies to, yes, teenage and college girls doing striptease. Many parents are unaware that their “sweet, innocent” daughters are exposing themselves to the world. Using the webcams of their bedroom and dorm-room PCs, they create provocative videos and upload them to YouTube. Why? Boundaries are meaningless. Exhibitionism is cool.

If you are still naïve enough to believe that women are more faithful than men, check out AshleyMadison.com, which supplies men for women who cheat on their husbands and boyfriends. When Monogamy Becomes Monotony is the motto of this service. Shocked? Welcome to reality. Bonus for the unsuspecting husband: If his cheating wife’s tryst produces a child, and he raises this child as his own, most states will force him to support it until age 18—even if he later discovers that he is not the child’s father. Ain’t MissBehavin’ great?

Much Ado About Nothing?

Do I care that women get drunk at strip joints, pose half-nude for their wedding albums, perform striptease on YouTube, and cheat on their husbands? At one level, I don’t care. We live in a free society. Why, then, do I want to expose women for exposing themselves? Two reasons. First, I am a member of society, and any deterioration of my society affects me. Deterioration of society from within the family begets more and larger government programs to compensate for what the family lacks. This is an atrocious state of affairs, antithetical to the principles of the United States.

Second, our society believes that women are better behaved than men, despite evidence to the contrary. After all, we’re not reading about grooms and their best men posing in their underwear for wedding albums, are we? The women described in this article are permitted to become mothers, role models, and they are ill-equipped to teach children right vs. wrong. Those children will, in turn, become parents and perpetuate the weakening of society’s fabric.

Accordingly, policemen and judges in family and criminal courts tend to presume women—especially mothers—innocent, while presuming men—especially fathers—guilty, giving women wide latitude to bend and even violate court orders. A highly esteemed lawyer once told me that judges deem identical behavior as violence, coming from a man, and emotion, coming from a woman. In almost all cases, when a woman confesses to falsely accusing a man of rape—a false accusation is a felony—she is released unpunished. And, every time Bill O’Reilly, host of The O’Reilly Factor on Fox News, debates Geraldo Rivera about an adult female, especially a teacher, having sex with a minor boy, Rivera laughs it off as a joke. It isn’t a joke.

As I’ve written previously, the double standard exists on TV, too. Women can endlessly insult and assault men, and America considers that funny. But, if men were to behave similarly toward women on any TV show, it would be off the air after one episode.

This anti-male bias, which begins in elementary schools, is unreasonable and unfair to all of society. In elementary schools, teachers confer upon girls, who tend to be mild at that age, behavior-benchmark status. When boys act rambunctiously, as they do at that age, many teachers force their parents to put them on Ritalin. Women good, men bad. Girls good, boys bad.

This anti-male bias raises its ugly head in our reproductive and domestic-violence laws. Here are but three examples:

• Roe v. Wade—gives women the right to choose abortion, gives men no rights
• VAWA (Violence Against Women Act)—gives women, even illegal aliens, wide latitude and financial assistance to accuse and falsely accuse men of violence; provides no legal relief or financial assistance to men whom women physically abuse, even though women and men physically abuse each other in equal percentages
• Safe-Haven Laws—47 states allow women, without penalty, to deposit their unwanted newborns at fire stations within 72 hours of birth, and to change their minds two weeks thereafter. Men must abide by whatever decisions the women make.

No-Nonsense Bottom Line

Clearly, men are limited in their rights and behaviors. Women, on the other hand, are behaving in ways unimagined just a few years ago—with impunity, indulgence, and great latitude. A woman can waltz into the office, dressed provocatively. If a man makes even a flattering comment to her, and she decides to make an issue of it, his life can end on that day. Women have gone wild and are becoming wilder. They are MissBehaving rampantly and the government encourages it.

If our society continues to tolerate the double standard that condones women and condemns men for identical behaviors, continues to offer special privileges to women, and fails to criticize women and hold them accountable for their MissBehaving, this trendline will lead us to a predictable, preventable, ultimate end, embodied by three bleak outcomes:

1. Men will become almost irrelevant
2. Women will self-destruct
3. Children will become criminals and wards of the state.

About the Author

Marc H. Rudov is an investment banker and business consultant residing in Silicon Valley, CA. He is the author of the book, The Man’s No-Nonsense Guide to Women: How to Succeed in Romance on Planet Earth^TM (ISBN 0974501719), and 19 articles.

Rudov’s book, articles, blog, and podcasts are available at http://www.thenononsenseman.com/.

Copyright ©2006 by Marc H. Rudov. All rights reserved.