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When Equitable Is Not Equal: Experimental Evidence On The Division Of Marital Assets In Divorce, Jennifer B. Shinall, Joni Hersch
When Equitable Is Not Equal: Experimental Evidence On The Division Of Marital Assets In Divorce, Jennifer B. Shinall, Joni Hersch
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Upon divorce, marital assets in most U.S. states are divided equitably, often with the underlying legal purpose of equalizing outcomes. To examine whether decisionmakers value economic considerations, such as opportunity cost, specialization, and bargaining power, we conducted a vignette study in which we asked subjects to divide marital assets equitably between an employed husband and a wife without labor market income in a wealthy household. Subjects award less than 50 percent of assets to the wife, regardless of her education or the level of marital assets. Men award lower shares but, unlike women, award a larger share to a more …
Pregnant People?, Jessica A. Clarke
Pregnant People?, Jessica A. Clarke
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
In their article Unsexing Pregnancy, David Fontana and Naomi Schoenbaum undertake the important project of disentangling the social aspects of pregnancy from those that relate to a pregnant woman’s body. They argue that the law should stop treating the types of work either parent can do — such as purchasing a car seat, finding a pediatrician, or choosing a daycare — as exclusively the domain of the pregnant woman. The project’s primary aim is to undermine legal rules that assume a gendered division of labor in which men are breadwinners and women are caretakers. But Fontana and Schoenbaum argue their …
Settling In The Shadow Of Sex: Gender Bias In Marital Asset Division, Jennifer Bennett Shinall
Settling In The Shadow Of Sex: Gender Bias In Marital Asset Division, Jennifer Bennett Shinall
Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications
Divorce has a long history of economically disempowering women. From the time of coverture to the era of modern divorce reform, women have been persistently disadvantaged by divorce relative to men. Family law scholars have long attributed this disadvantage to the continued prevalence of traditional gender roles and the failure of current marital asset division laws to account adequately for this prevalence. In spite of the progress made by the women's movement over the past half-century, married, heterosexual women endure as the primary caretaker in the majority of households, and married, heterosexual men endure as the primary breadwinners. Undoubtedly, women …