Alimony is off the table when infidelity can be proved in court. This was the case even when alimony was super common back in the 80s and 90s.
If you were a homemaker seeking divorce you could get alimony without being a perfect person, but infidelity was one of the few instant "no"s in divorce court.
The original intent behind alimony was to compensate a homemaker who had put their career on hold and essentially trashed their resume. They’d permanently hobbled their earning potential for the marriage and the marriage fell apart.
It only became possible to even think of alimony as supplemental income in the 90s and early 2000s when judges were handing decisions to women almost as a matter of course. It took a decade or two before divorce courts (and family courts) started to chill out and look at things a little more objectively, but even during the bad old days infidelity was the one thing that every single judge would throw the book at you for.
It’s just so fucking painful to imagine. Being cheated on feels fucking awful. Then having to permanently pay someone who did that to you. Also, if that cheating was the cause of the divorce, then that means they’re not just taking money from you, that person took your marriage from you.
So you’re sexually violated, lose your most valuable relationship, and then you have to pay the person who did it to you like they’re your landlord.
That is entirely untrue for divorce in Ontario, and probably other parts of Canada. Spousal support and divorce settlements in general have nothing to do with infidelity. No-fault divorce is available after 1 year of separation. For the financials the court uses a formula based on length of marriage and relative incomes as their guideline.
Bad for Ontario for creating a strict formula with no caps that doesn’t consider the possibility that the man might not be making as money later in his career. Dave Foley got a divorce when he was at the top of his career, but since he’s not on TV anymore and not making anywhere near the money he was getting when he was on TV. His alimony payments are higher than his income now, the judge admitted this, but the law didn’t consider this as a possibility. Last I heard he can’t return to Canada or he’ll be arrested.
So it’s a poorly written law.
