Into Extinction Day 82 (what’s the cost of divorce?)

  Karma – Is both the evil and the good a person does. Karma determines destiny. If a person has done too much evil, he or she cannot escape the wheel of life or the transmigration of souls. If a person’s karma is good, he or she will attain moksha or Nirvana.

I am not a complete believer in Karma but I do believe what you put into the world you get back.   I am not saying the collapse of the marriage is completely her fault – no I own half the failure, its just that I paid for 100% of the debt. 

I am wondering why anyone would get married in Canada.  Now it could be that I am bitter about what has happened to me and that would be right but lets look at a few numbers (No I didn’t make these numbers up – I reference Statistics Canda for the information).

1. Most Males get married around the age of 29.
2. Most Males if they decide on divorce (approximately 35%) get a divorce around the age 40 to 43.  Actually this isn’t completely true the higher divorce rate is males from 20 to 29.
3. If I cross reference the StatsCan data to the published data from the MEP Survey conducted in 2006, the majority of people paying out on divorces are between the ages of 35 to 44 (less than 6% of the MEP Debtors are women – interesting isn’t it?)
4. 66% of the men in the Enforcement Program have no college degree or advanced eduction.
5. 77% of the men make less than $60,000 a year.

Now we have our statistics, lets take a look at what these numbers actually mean.  Lets say your gross income is $50,000.00 and you live in Alberta and when you divorced, there were 2 children. 

1. Net monthly wage on $50,000.00 is $3,102.42.  No I didn’t make this number up, from the Government of Alberta website on finances the Provincal Tax is $3,185 and Federal is $9586 assuming no input to RRSPs.
2. Child Support (according to Alberta Guidelines is $719 for both children).
3. Spousal Support is quite varied but lets be consertive and say its $400 a month.
4. That comes up to $1,119 a month reducing your net income to $1,983.00.  This is 36% of your net income.
5. Lets say the children go to school and play in after school activities and have dental and health care requirements.  Lets say another $6,000 a year from you.  that would be another $500.00 a month, reducing your net income to $1,483.00. 
6. Your rent is $700 a month because Alberta is not cheap – you are left with $783.00
7. You have to eat – thats another $500 a month – $383.00
8. You have to drive a car, insurance and gas – $68.00
9. Okay utilities another $60 a month, basic cable another $32 a month, clothing another $30 a month, phone another $30 a month, and home insurance another $50 a month – total is $175, leaving you with a problem – minus $107.00.
10. Lets say when you left your wife, the children were 8 and 10.  Thats at least 8 years of payments.

You would have to live much cheaper and eat a lot Mac and Cheese to survive because this doesn’t cover incidental expenses or you get a second job.   You can never go out, never see a movie, never have dinner at a nice place.  I can see why some men commit suicide.  If you don’t pay MEP than they take everything anyways.  What you don’t see MEP doing is trying to understand what the program really does to debtors – what it strips from them.   I meant sure its about the children but there has to be a better balance here.