Divorce Laws In Oregon

In the state of Oregon, according to Divorce Source, property is divided in an equitable fashion. This means it is divided by what is fair, Oregon encourages people to come to their own decision on how things will be split before taking it into the hands of the courts. The property divided includes real and/or personal property, this includes debts, pensions, houses, real estate, and anything else acquired. It is important to note that Oregon courts also include the homemaker contribution when splitting up assets, it is assumed that both parties in the marriage were equal partners. By including the reproductive labor Oregon is working against the idea of economic globalization, which is the process that integrate economics toward a global market place through growth of corporations and networks of production and consumers. (391)

When it comes to custody Oregon courts decide based on the general welfare of the child, they look into the emotional ties, the attitude towards the child from each parent, the desire of a continued relationship, if a parent was abusive, preference, and the willingness and ability of each parent. This maybe reconsidered if either parent was abusive in anyway, or if the general health of the child would be in danger. Another aspect of divorce is the idea of child support, how it’s divided and decided varies in every state. Oregon has child support which is based on the Income Shares Model, this means that the support is divided by which each parent earns. Some variables taken into account include earning capacity, if the parent can borrow money, how much each person has made in the past and the overall needs of the child. This is used to decided which parent pays child support. This money is to be used to benefit the child, in addition the paying parent may have to have a life insurance plan with the child as a beneficiary so that in case of anything the child is still taken care of.

Although divorce affect everyone, women and children can at times get the grunt of the burden. The main way is financially, after divorce most women have to take on second jobs to be able to cover the extra expenses. This in turn affects the children because they have less parental control, and spend less time with their parents. It is much harder for a women to return to the type of life she had become accustomed to because of the stress of childcare, less money, and more responsibilities. Children of divorce often have more anxieties and fear of love, commitments, or abandonment. The loss of an addition paycheck and money can lead to higher poverty rates for women and children. You can see this by looking at the poverty rates for divorced women and their children in Oregon. From the article entitled Marriage and Poverty I found that mothers were much more likely to fall to poverty after divorce than fathers. It was found in article The Gender Gap in the Economic Well-Being of Nonresident Fathers and Custodial Mothers that “19 percent of mothers became impoverished, only 3 percent of the husbands became poor after separating”. In addition to this mothers are less likely to rise out of poverty as well. Children often times suffer financially after their parents divorce, it was found that children in non-intact households were more likely to experience poverty, by the age of 17 about 81 percent had lived at least one year in poverty. After the divorce as stated earlier child support is decided. In Oregon their are laws that ensure this is paid, for those parents that don’t pay there are consequences that are at times fairly severe. These include, liens on property or assets, state and federal tax refunds intercepted, money deducted from pay check or even a jail sentence. There is also a nine percent interest on all missed child support payments.

After studying the divorce laws in Oregon I see clearly how it connects to what we have been talking about in class, I found that most of the laws set up generally assume that the children will stay with the mother post-divorce. From my research I found that women are more likely to suffer after a divorce whereas men bounce back quicker and after a year are usually living at the same standard as they did before the divorce. Women now have less money and more work which leads to more stress and eventual health problems. I found on the US Census that before divorce about 23 percent of women were not in the labor force whereas after divorce this number drops to 19 percent. This means that more women have to go and get jobs to support their families and in turn spend less time caring for children. While researching I thought back to the reading “The Gender Wage Gap By Occupation”. It seems to me that if we got rid of the gender wage gap, which is the difference in what men and women typically earn, then women would be just as likely to recover after a divorce as their male counterpart. In the book there is a chapter entitled Family Systems, Family Lives, I looked into some of the readings and found that more mothers with children under the age of three in developed countries are now working. This may be due in part to high divorce rates and a need for an additional income. This chapter also has a table on Families and Poverty, I found that according to this a 4.9 of all married couple are below the poverty line, it then jumped to 11.6 when it was a female householder with no male present.  

Overall, it seems that women and child often suffer the most when it comes to divorce and rebounding back to their normal life afterwards. Women have to work more hours and still come home for their “second-shift” taking care of the house and cooking. Since women get paid less for the work they do compared to a man they have a harder time making ends meet when forced to be in a single household.

Work Cited:

Shaw, Susan. Women's Voices Feminist Visions. 5th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. 354-362, 391. Print.

Hegewisch, Ariane. "The Gender Wage Gap by Occupation." Institute For Women's Policy Research. (2012): 2-6. Print.