The Pittsburgh Press (September 26, 1941)
CANDIDLY SPEAKING —
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Alimony wives set up pre-tax howl
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By Maxine Garrison
Certain ladies have come face to face with a new show that pinches before it is even tried on. They are protesting. They are yowling. Even though they’ve earned the new show, they show no intention of accepting it with quiet grace and dignity. In short, they aren’t acting too much like ladies.
It has been proposed in Congress that ex-husbands be allowed to deduct their alimony payments from taxable income, and that the ex-wives pay the income tax on alimony.
Ex-wives no likee.
Led by such shining lights as Liz Altemus Whitney (ex-Mrs. John Hay Whitney) and Gladys Hopkins Whitney (ex-Mrs. Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney), they are organizing to fight. They don’t want to pay income tax to a government which allows them to make husbands financially responsible for their well-being even after the marriage is all over.
Is that gratitude?
Object of sympathy
By our system, it is considered that a woman has given a husband the best years of her life even if they were only married for a year or two. When the marriage splits up, she is usually the object of any sympathy that might be lying around loose at the time. It makes no difference whether she or the husband was responsible for the breakup, or whether they were equally responsible. That’s one phase of our lovely, cock-eyed American chivalry.
In most cases, the wife is the one who sues. That is a courtesy her husband owes her, the book says. It also gives her the right, as the injured party, to ask for alimony.
There don’t need to be children who must be supported. The wife need not be in a position of need herself, i.e., she needn’t be too old to work or to lack the training to earn her own living. The husband’s income is regarded as legitimate prey in almost all circumstances, until such time as she decided to remarry.
There is no doubt that alimony is justified, quite necessary and equitably decided upon in many cases. There is also no doubt that many women have become alimony pirates.
A man may lose the fortune on which his alimony is based, and yet be still supposed to keep up with his payments. His salary may go from $1,000 a week to $25 or nothing a week, but alimony is supposed to go on.
No responsibilities
Almost any way you look at it, ex-wives who received alimony are the ones who get the icing off the cake. They are free of a wife’s responsibilities, even if they must keep up with those of a mother, they receive an independent income, and they need answer to no one.
Now it is suggested that they accept some small responsibility for all this. That the husband at least be freed from having to pay income tax on his alimony payments, and the wife pay the tax from her share.
It isn’t an awful lot to ask. The income tax is reaching into more pocketbooks than it ever has, taxes and prices are both headed upward. Everybody is being asked to sacrifice.
Alimoneyed ex-wives are pretty much in the position of those frequently cursed millionaires with their tax-exempt bonds. They get their money after the tax has already been taken care of.
Yet they start screaming like banshees the minute it is suggested that they share the taxes as well as the wealth. Maybe you’re right, girls, but from where the rest of us sit, you look pretty small.