University of Michigan Law School University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository Articles Faculty Scholarship 1991 Rethinking Alimony: Marital Decisions and Moral Discourse Carl E. Schneider University of Michigan Law School,
[email protected] Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles/1957 Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/articles Part of the Family Law Commons Recommended Citation Schneider, Carl E. "Rethinking Alimony: Marital Decisions and Moral Discourse." B. Y. U. L. Rev. 1, no. 1 (1991): 197-257. This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by an authorized administrator of University of Michigan Law School Scholarship Repository. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Rethinking Alimony: Marital Decisions and Moral Discourse Carl E. Schneider* I. INTRODUCTION The riddle of alimony is why one former spouse should have to support the other when no-fault divorce seems to establish the principle that marriage need not be for life and when gov ernmental regulation of intimate relationships is conventionally condemned. Perhaps the most intelligent and probing recent at tempt to solve that riddle is Ira Ellman's The Theory of Ali mony. 1 In this article, I have two purposes. The first is to ask some questions about Professor Ellman's admirable inquiry into this intricate and intractable problem. These questions are not intended to disprove "the theory."2 Professor Ellman has, at the least, identified a number of ideas which should influence our thinking about alimony, and he has shown why a number of others probably should not.