[Indexed as: Dix, Dorothy, (Alimony Racket in Illinois), syndicated, The Ogden State Examiner (Ut.), Jun. 5, 1936]

The Illinois supreme court has thrown a monkey-wrench in the divorce machinery by upholding a “domestic reform statute” which says that if a wife who has no children divorces her husband, he cannot be  forced to pay alimony for more than two years after the divorce. That gives her time to look about for a job or a new husband and, if she doesn’t find one, it is just too bad the ex-husband should worry.

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This is the first effective move that has ever been made to discourage divorce, for it will not only stop the alimony racket, out of which thousands of hard-toiled ladies wangle a luxurious living, but it also will cause other thousands of fretful, discontented wives to pause before rushing to the divorce court with their peeves, and consider whether husbands who may not come up to their ideals may not be better, after all, than having to get out and earn their own living.

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There has never been any more conscienceless and cruel graft than that which is practiced by women who marry men for the sole purpose of holding them up for alimony. They have no particle of affection for their victims. They have no intention of keeping their marriage vows. They make no effort to get along with their husbands. But they figure it out that alimony is easy money and working a sentimental judge is easier than working for a boss who will expect service for the money he pays out. So they marry some poor sap and sell him into a lifelong slavery.

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All that one of these female brigands has to do is to accuse her husband of “mental cruelty,” which may consist of nothing more heinous than the way he has his hair cut or his reading the paper at breakfast, and forthwith she gets her decree and collects a large and juicy slice of the unfortunate man’s earnings that enables her to live without working and often to support a second husband. All of us know men who have been impoverished, their business ruined, their ambitions blighted, who have not been able to have the decent comforts of life for themselves or for their second wives and their children, because of the extortionate demands of their first wives who married them for what they could get, and who got everything.

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Besides these women who marry for revenue only, there is a large class of other women who get divorces simply because they are restless and crave excitement, and who like to swap husbands as they like to swap their old car for a new one. I get thousands of letters from such women who tell me that their husbands are good and kind and fine providers; that they have lovely homes and fine cars and pretty clothes, but they are thinking of getting divorces because their Johns are just commonplace business men instead of romantic lovers and, anyway, the way John eats, or his fussy little ways have got on their nerves.

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A lot of these women do get divorces for no better reason than that their middle-aged husbands are not Clark Gables. But do you think any one of them would even cast an eye toward Reno if she knew that her decree absolute would only insure her two years more of soft living, and after that she would have to scuffle for herself? It is because women think that they can eat their wedding cake and have it, too, that makes them get divorces without cause.

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But, on the other hand, while men should be protected from the alimony hound, wives should be protected from being turned out of homes like old work horses by husbands who have jumped the bars and wandered off into fresher and greener pastures. When, a poor girl marries a poor boy and works shoulder-to-shoulder with him helping him make his fortune, it belongs to her just as much as it does to him, and it would be a crime for him to be able to divorce her with only enough of the money she has earned to feed her for two years.

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It has always seemed to me that when it came to a property settlement in a divorce the amount of money the wife should receive should depend on the kind of wife she has been. If a woman is young and childless, strong and healthy, why should a man have to pay the whole price for the mistake they made in marrying? And why should a man have to continue to support the woman who had made his life a hell to him, that drove him to divorce, because he could bear it no longer?

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But if a woman has been a good wife to a man; if she has borne his children and given years and years to working and scrimping and saving in order to help him along, then she is at least entitled to as generous an alimony as her ex-husband can pay her.

DOROTHY DIX.