Jump to content
Objectivism Online Forum

Can An Objectivist Receive Support Payments?

Rate this topic


Recommended Posts

I know a guy who is a raging objectivist. He was married to a girl who was much smarter and professionally successful than him. For a brief period in his life he worked as a teacher and ended up in bed with one of his students. He is now divorced.

As part of the divorce settlement he was given support payments for a year or two, plus he receives child care payments also from his ex-wife.

This all seems strange to me that someone who is such an avowed objectivist would accept support payments such as these. Am I missing something here or is he taking the best of both sides?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

B)-->

QUOTE(sam c b @ Jun 12 2006, 07:41 AM)
This all seems strange to me that someone who is such an avowed objectivist would accept support payments such as these.
I don't see any conflict. In the business world, severance pay and contract buy-outs are common, so I would imagine he is getting compensation for whatever he contributed to the marriage. It would probably be best to invite him to come here and make the case, so that we can assess what is fair (yeah, like any sane person would expose themselves like that). Anyhow, there is the complication that the government gets involved in marriages, which is quite unfortunate since that government involvement means that people don't generally bother with prenuptial agreements which spell this sort of thing out (I assume that this alimony is not part of a prenup).

As for the child support, that is simply the court recognising that the mother has a financial obligation to her child, since the child is incapable of surviving on its own. This is not support to him, it is support to the child which is the mother's responsibility, and he is the custodian of that care.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

B)-->

QUOTE(sam c b @ Jun 12 2006, 08:41 AM)

I know a guy who is a raging objectivist. He was married to a girl who was much smarter and professionally successful than him. For a brief period in his life he worked as a teacher and ended up in bed with one of his students. He is now divorced.

As part of the divorce settlement he was given support payments for a year or two, plus he receives child care payments also from his ex-wife.

This all seems strange to me that someone who is such an avowed objectivist would accept support payments such as these. Am I missing something here or is he taking the best of both sides?

Just going off this information provided, I'd say he should never have been granted support payments in the first place. He cheated on his wife, breach of contract. If he felt the need to seek someone better than his wife, he should have left her first. But there has to be more to the story because generally, the cheating spouse, especially the husband, is not granted enough custody of the children to even receive child support.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Just going off this information provided, I'd say he should never have been granted support payments in the first place. He cheated on his wife, breach of contract. If he felt the need to seek someone better than his wife, he should have left her first. But there has to be more to the story because generally, the cheating spouse, especially the husband, is not granted enough custody of the children to even receive child support.
You're assuming she divorced him because he cheated on her. Maybe he DID divorce her. Maybe she attacked him with a butcher knife. You don't know: a one-sentence exposition isn't much to go on.

:)-->

QUOTE(sam c b @ Jun 12 2006, 09:41 AM)
I know a guy who is a raging [O]bjectivist.

Why are you on this forum, exactly?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You're assuming she divorced him because he cheated on her. Maybe he DID divorce her. Maybe she attacked him with a butcher knife. You don't know: a one-sentence exposition isn't much to go on.

Yes, yes I am assuming. I thought I had made that clear with "Just going off this information provided," and "But there has to be more to the story "

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm mostly wondering why this sam character has started a thread about someone else and not responded.

I have other priorities in my life other than an objectivist forum. I remember from my university days reading and thinking thru the ideas of objectivism so I always thought that I understood the strong positions this fellow took. But he always saw the world as black or white and never could understand that some of us could also see grey. So basically we lived our lives apart. But this guy was married to my wife's sister so there never was getting too far away from him but that also meant that when the marriage broke up I got to hear all the details about the settlement.

So it just seemed strange to me that someone who believed so strongly in self determination and individualism and stuff like that would stoop to taking money from his ex-wife. This guy spent most of his life not working, his university era jobs were all government funded, none of his self employment jobs ever got off the extensive drawing boards he constructed, his only real job was a few year stint as a teacher in a private school where he got to promote objectivism and enamor a girl some 25 years his junior. Now she supports him while he goes to the gym and works out.

I guess it just seems to me that he ends up dominating the relationship and takes a free ride by having his partner work while he doesn't. I just thought the support payments took it a bit too far for someone who was a believer in objectivism. So I did a search for a forum like yours and posed the question. Now I see various answers to it but still no hard interpretation of objectivism and its position on support. Perhaps this will get it. I hope so. Thanks for your help.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

;)-->

QUOTE(sam c b @ Jun 19 2006, 02:40 PM)

I have other priorities in my life other than an objectivist forum. I remember from my university days reading and thinking thru the ideas of objectivism so I always thought that I understood the strong positions this fellow took. But he always saw the world as black or white and never could understand that some of us could also see grey. So basically we lived our lives apart. But this guy was married to my wife's sister so there never was getting too far away from him but that also meant that when the marriage broke up I got to hear all the details about the settlement.

So it just seemed strange to me that someone who believed so strongly in self determination and individualism and stuff like that would stoop to taking money from his ex-wife. This guy spent most of his life not working, his university era jobs were all government funded, none of his self employment jobs ever got off the extensive drawing boards he constructed, his only real job was a few year stint as a teacher in a private school where he got to promote objectivism and enamor a girl some 25 years his junior. Now she supports him while he goes to the gym and works out.

I guess it just seems to me that he ends up dominating the relationship and takes a free ride by having his partner work while he doesn't. I just thought the support payments took it a bit too far for someone who was a believer in objectivism. So I did a search for a forum like yours and posed the question. Now I see various answers to it but still no hard interpretation of objectivism and its position on support. Perhaps this will get it. I hope so. Thanks for your help.

Why was he awarded support payments?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

;)-->

QUOTE(sam c b @ Jun 19 2006, 03:40 PM)

Now I see various answers to it but still no hard interpretation of objectivism and its position on support. Perhaps this will get it. I hope so. Thanks for your help.

This is because "Objectivism" isn't an intrinsicist philsophy or a religion; there aren't commandments like "thou shalt not accept money from people". Instead, there are basic principles that you must apply to concrete situations using your brain. Since we STILL don't know much about the concrete situation, we won't be able to provide any constructive answers, just some approximations.

From the little you've said, however, it sounds like this fellow is more of a hypocrit than an Objectivist: he's not practicing what he preaches and thus he has no integrity. But, since I don't actually know 100% what it is that he preaches and claims is Objectivism (or what his situation is, since your explanations remain terse) I couldn't say for sure.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Hey there Dragon Lady thank you. This whole thing isn't that big a deal to me so answering questions and getting into a debate was not something I was inclined to do. What i was looking for was an opinion from someone like yourself with 2161 posts! Gadzooks, that's a lot of posts but it gives you the credibility that I was seeking.

I thought that he was being a hypocrite and I'll take your opinion as confirmation. And that's pretty well the end of it, the tenants of objectivism as I understand them remain, and my ex brother in law doesn't quite fit into the role model he parades around in.

Thanks for your help.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

:D-->

QUOTE(sam c b @ Jun 22 2006, 04:30 PM)
. And that's pretty well the end of it, the tenants of objectivism as I understand them remain, and my ex brother in law doesn't quite fit into the role model he parades around in.

Thanks for your help.

It's always sad when you realize that someone isn't as good as they appeared, especially when you've been trying to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 7 years later...

Hey there Dragon Lady thank you. This whole thing isn't that big a deal to me so answering questions and getting into a debate was not something I was inclined to do. What i was looking for was an opinion from someone like yourself with 2161 posts! Gadzooks, that's a lot of posts but it gives you the credibility that I was seeking.

I thought that he was being a hypocrite and I'll take your opinion as confirmation. And that's pretty well the end of it, the tenants of objectivism as I understand them remain, and my ex brother in law doesn't quite fit into the role model he parades around in.

Thanks for your help.

 

I know that this is 7 years old but I don't like that.  Dragon Lady took your questions seriously and engaged her mind fully in her reply to you.  To belittle her or imply that she is in error by making a mountain out of a molehill, is quite unfair to her.  Suppose you held this thread very important and her replies were flippant, would that have been acceptable to you?

Edited by dreadrocksean
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Clearly, the facts of "sam c b's brother-in-law" are unclear. (ex-brother-in-law? Or maybe simply, Brother-X?) It would be interesting to explore the realities of government transfer programs in action, regarding Brother-X, with more facts to work with. Could I have consensus that once one has paid into a government program, voluntarily or coerces, one then has a legal, if not completely moral right to the contractual share of monies transferred. Example: Social Security Insurance; upon full qualification, should not the recipient collect their legal payment, after years of being forced to pay into it?

Child support is a matter I am familiar with, and one of which I have arrived at my own conclusions. As for our dubious Objectivist Brother-X, if what sam c b says stands as the only known facts, I have my doubts. Facts matter.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...