Synonyms
Abstract
Alimony or spousal support is a transfer of income between spouses intended mainly to reduce inequality in living standards following a divorce. Economic analysis provides two justifications for maintaining it in societies where women are now less financially dependent on their husbands and fault is no longer a decisive factor in divorce: the efficiency of marriage and the prevention of opportunism. It also provides some theoretical justifications for the methods used to calculate it.
Introduction
In many Western countries, the law provides that in the event of divorce, one of the spouses (generally the husband) will pay a sum of money to the ex-spouse (generally the wife) in the form of a lump-sum or regular payments, in particular when the separation leads to a significant difference in living standards. This transfer has different names in different countries: pension alimentaire pour époux in Quebec, spousal support in Canada, alimonyin the...
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Bourreau-Dubois, C., Doriat-Duban, M. (2017). Alimony. In: Marciano, A., Ramello, G. (eds) Encyclopedia of Law and Economics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_680-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7883-6_680-1
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