<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>barrkel</author><text>This is an argument for marriages as contracts, but no more. I don&apos;t read an argument in what you say in favour of a government involvement in defining what a marriage is. Contract law should be sufficient.</text><parent_chain><item><author>commanda</author><text>Actually, yes.&lt;p&gt;Many marriages are entered into by two parties with the agreement that one party will be the primary caretaker of the children (home-maker), which is a profession that is unpaid.  The other party will work outside the home and provide money for the family.  In that case, the years of work that the home-maker has put in should be recognized as valid work, and in the event of a break-up of the marriage, the home-maker should continue to receive monetary support from the other party, as they (often) have no viable other professional skills. This needs to be enforceable in court in the interest of people whose profession is home-maker.&lt;p&gt;This is also why gay marriage (and gay divorce) should be legally codified like straight marriage is.  People need legal recourse to persist their own standards of living.&lt;p&gt;If someone entering into a marriage does not want to take on the lifetime of responsibility of providing for the person who is promising to take on the role of home-maker in their household, perhaps they shouldn&apos;t enter into a marriage.</text></item><item><author>pohl</author><text>&lt;i&gt;What can we do?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Abandon the institution of marriage entirely. Nuke it from orbit, as it were.  It&apos;s the only way to be sure.&lt;p&gt;The legal end of it is a mere wealth-redistribution mechanism.  The social end of it is made of community who loves to witness people getting into marriages, but they scatter during the demise.  So what function does it perform?  From my perspective, it only serves to weaken commitment by trying to offload the responsibility of staying together to a legal framework.&lt;p&gt;Can anybody make a good case for continuing the charade?</text></item><item><author>lionhearted</author><text>&amp;#62; What caught me by surprise, and forced me to seek emergency loans from friends, were the enormous legal fees I had to pay my ex-wife&apos;s divorce lawyers. In a California divorce, the wealthier spouse must pay both sides of the battle even if they are not the aggressor.&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; The legal and accounting bills for the divorce total four million dollars so far, which is an average of roughly $170,000 per month for the past 24 months. Journalists were quick to mock the poor &quot;broke&quot; guy that had $200k a month expenses, failing to note that legal fees constituted the majority.&lt;p&gt;That&apos;s utterly despicable - Grellas, can you help us put together a plan to disbar and exile everyone involved in the divorce racket or something? Talk about a destruction of wealth, energy, time, and life - it&apos;s embarrassing that we let this happen to people in the United States.&lt;p&gt;Our family/divorce courts and the associated personnel are destructive, vindictive, and capricious. This needs to change. Why do people stand for it? What can we do?</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Elon Musk: Correcting the Record About My Divorce </title><url>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elon-musk/correcting-the-record-abo_b_639625.html</url></story>
<instructions>Your goal is to analyze the following comment and estimate how highly it will be upvoted by the Hacker News community.</instructions><comment><author>inerte</author><text>commanda, you&apos;re correct but you answered the wrong question, the poster wanted to know why have marriages at all and not why alimony exists :)</text><parent_chain><item><author>commanda</author><text>Actually, yes.&lt;p&gt;Many marriages are entered into by two parties with the agreement that one party will be the primary caretaker of the children (home-maker), which is a profession that is unpaid.  The other party will work outside the home and provide money for the family.  In that case, the years of work that the home-maker has put in should be recognized as valid work, and in the event of a break-up of the marriage, the home-maker should continue to receive monetary support from the other party, as they (often) have no viable other professional skills. This needs to be enforceable in court in the interest of people whose profession is home-maker.&lt;p&gt;This is also why gay marriage (and gay divorce) should be legally codified like straight marriage is.  People need legal recourse to persist their own standards of living.&lt;p&gt;If someone entering into a marriage does not want to take on the lifetime of responsibility of providing for the person who is promising to take on the role of home-maker in their household, perhaps they shouldn&apos;t enter into a marriage.</text></item><item><author>pohl</author><text>&lt;i&gt;What can we do?&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Abandon the institution of marriage entirely. Nuke it from orbit, as it were.  It&apos;s the only way to be sure.&lt;p&gt;The legal end of it is a mere wealth-redistribution mechanism.  The social end of it is made of community who loves to witness people getting into marriages, but they scatter during the demise.  So what function does it perform?  From my perspective, it only serves to weaken commitment by trying to offload the responsibility of staying together to a legal framework.&lt;p&gt;Can anybody make a good case for continuing the charade?</text></item><item><author>lionhearted</author><text>&amp;#62; What caught me by surprise, and forced me to seek emergency loans from friends, were the enormous legal fees I had to pay my ex-wife&apos;s divorce lawyers. In a California divorce, the wealthier spouse must pay both sides of the battle even if they are not the aggressor.&lt;p&gt;&amp;#62; The legal and accounting bills for the divorce total four million dollars so far, which is an average of roughly $170,000 per month for the past 24 months. Journalists were quick to mock the poor &quot;broke&quot; guy that had $200k a month expenses, failing to note that legal fees constituted the majority.&lt;p&gt;That&apos;s utterly despicable - Grellas, can you help us put together a plan to disbar and exile everyone involved in the divorce racket or something? Talk about a destruction of wealth, energy, time, and life - it&apos;s embarrassing that we let this happen to people in the United States.&lt;p&gt;Our family/divorce courts and the associated personnel are destructive, vindictive, and capricious. This needs to change. Why do people stand for it? What can we do?</text></item></parent_chain></comment><story><title>Elon Musk: Correcting the Record About My Divorce </title><url>http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elon-musk/correcting-the-record-abo_b_639625.html</url></story>