My boyfriend and I haven’t even been dating a year and we’re already fighting about a divorce settlement. Not our divorce settlement, but everyone else’s. He seems to think that Kobe Bryant’s wife is not entitled to the $75 million dollars she is likely to get. And I am outraged.
In California, without a prenup, husband and wife must split equally everything that was earned during the marriage. The moment a husband earns a dollar, the wife is immediately the owner of fifty cents of that dollar. Any wealth that either party has before the marriage, they both get to keep. But because Kobe and before him Mel Gibson earned their respective $150 and $850 million while married, their wives will leave the marriage with half of the money.
I happen to think this is fair. The problem is, my seemingly perfect Mr. Dreamboat, does not. It first came up this past summer, when I was studying to take the CA bar and read about Ron Burkle’s divorce. Burkle, the supermarket mogul, was worth about $2 billion, however he (in my opinion) swindled his wife out of the billion she was due and she received only $40 million. Of course, $40 million is an enormous sum, but it’s the principle; she should have gotten half. My boyfriend expressed some indignation that any stay-at-home wife who had raised children deserved $1 billion dollars.
So how much is it worth, then? I snapped back.
I don’t know, but not $1 billion dollars.
Mr. Dreamboat seems to think that there is a cap on how much a stay at home mom is worth. (Although I use husband as the generic breadwinner because it’s still more common, I believe the same rules apply when the wife is the income-earner — a stay-at-home dad is also entitled to half.) People think that Gibson and Kobe are being defrauded out of their fortunes by greedy wives. These stories have headlines like, “Divorce will cost Kelsey Grammer $50 million” and just last week, the cover of People magazine said “Mel loses $425 mil in divorce.” But you never see headlines that say, “Gibson’s wife of thirty years who raised seven kids, virtually alone, while enduring life with an alcoholic gets what she deserves.”
The problem is, no one actually deserves that much money. Does Mel Gibson deserve $425 million dollars because we have a warped celebrity culture that paid him $20 million dollars a movie to carry around a sword on a horse and wear make-up? Does Ron Burkle really deserve $2 billion dollars? No, because no one does. But he happens to have earned it through a combination of luck, circumstance, and hard work. And because of those same things, and California property laws that believe marriage is a partnership, their wives should get half.
My feeling about marriage is that once you enter into it, you are no longer doing anything alone. The sum is greater than the two parts and so it’s not a husband who earns money and then shares it with his wife. Rather, the marriage is earning the money all along. Once married, the breadwinner is not earning that money by himself. He is enabled by the other spouse. Maybe Burkle’s wife made it possible for him to earn all that money by supporting him during school or helping him make business decisions or keeping him afloat when he decided to take big financial risks. This seems especially true in the case of a stay-at-home parent, who keeps a home, picks up dry-cleaning, lays out socks to match a suit, and takes the kids to soccer.
Plus, suppose you can determine a monetary value for parenting. Say that the monetary value of a stay-at-home mom’s hard work equals 25% of her husband’s earnings. Reciprocally, should the husband be able to claim responsibility for only 25% of the people the children turn out to be? Is dad entitled to only 25% of the kids’ affection because he only did 25% of the parenting?
When this first came up in my relationship, I didn’t push the issue very far because we hadn’t been dating very long. But ever since, I’ve been wondering if we fundamentally disagree about our philosophies regarding marriage. And if we do, wouldn’t we flunk one of those compatibility quizzes so badly, the screen would start flashing red with BAD MATCH written across it? So when this topic came up again thanks to Kobe, now ten months into our relationship, I rolled up my sleeves and dove into the debate.
He again reiterated his dismay at the large divorce settlement so I dug further, explaining my aforementioned reasons for supporting Kobe’s wife. And though I kept most of the sass at bay, I just couldn’t resist a little indignation. I just could never marry someone who fundamentally disagreed with me about the philosophy of marriage, I said haughtily.
You make some good points, he said. But he wasn’t done. He reminded me about a facet of divorce that I had forgotten about. This whole time, I’d been perplexed by his opinion because he’s rather close with his mother, a stay-at-home mom, and I couldn’t understand how he could undervalue her contribution. But I had forgotten about his father, who has been less lucky in marriage. My boyfriend has seen divorce from the other side. When there are short-term marriages and no children involved, do I still believe that everything must be shared equally? I could imagine a hypothetical where the marriage was short and the wife was not working at the marriage while the husband was working at the marriage and earning a large income and upon divorce, the husband felt like the wife was asking for more than her fair sure.
When I think about marriage, I form opinions based on my marriage. Of course, having never been married, I talk based only on how I want it to be. I imagine I will work tirelessly at being a long-term wife and mother, and should I sacrifice my career, I want my husband to feel that everything he earned, we earned together because I would be working just as hard as him. It had never occurred to me that divorce might come after a short marriage or without children because well, I can’t imagine a marriage like that. My parents have been married 35 years, all of my parents’ friends are still married… suffice to say, I didn’t grow up with a lot of divorce. I started to realize he had a point. But does he really think that any marriage involving me might involve someone not pulling her weight?
I think you might convince me of this though, he added after explaining his reasoning. Don’t give up on this one, he smiled knowingly at me. Maybe it’s not a philosophy regarding marriage that I have to convince him of. Maybe it’s me I have to convince him of. After all, I don’t want to marry someone who believes we have the same opinion on divorce settlements. I want to marry someone who believes that there’s not going to be any divorce at all.
I’ve been watching my clients — and myself — these past two years around the experience of charging fees, asking for payment, suggesting folks re-enroll in their programs, etc., and here’s what I’ve found …
Very few people like asking for money, and no one finds it easy — we universally hate it.
Why?
Because asking for money brings up thousands of insecurities and doubts. We’re scared to look money in the face, command it, control it, and to put ourselves out there. Asking for fair compensation means putting a formal stake in the ground about where we stand in a value equation. And most are simply too unclear about their own worthiness to do that.
Folks tell me that when they ask for money from clients or customers, questions swim inside their heads about their value, impact, and “appeal.” They fear that asking for money is the opposite of being “pleasing” to people, and will be a huge turn off. (For a fascinating discussion around if we should worry about what other people think of us, see Jonathan Fields’s recent post “What Other People Think IS Your Business.”)
In tough times like these, consultants, coaches, practitioners and entrepreneurs struggle hard to stand up for what they want/deserve in compensation or fees/prices, fearing no one will pay. And in the end, many aren’t sure themselves what their services are worth.
At the root of this money challenge are shame, doubt and insecurity: Am I good enough? How can I put a value on what I offer? Will there be enough people to pay this? Will they come back? Did they think my work was a good value? How do I fare against the competition? Did I give them great results?
In exploring the question of money with coaches and consultants who are highly financially successful and charging upwards of $400 an hour with ease, I’ve observed these five traits:
1) They have tapped into a large pool of potential clients who can easily pay their fees.
2) They’ve had prior high-level business experience and success that contributes to their sense of worth and value.
3) They’re very well-boundaried — they know where they end and others begin, and are clear about how they stack up against the competition.
4) They focus on business development continually — they understand the power of networking and building a supportive referral network.
5) Most are men.
I’ve observed in my research that men in general have greater access to a sense of “entitlement” — they believe they deserve the fees they’ve set and don’t tend to agonize or apologize about what they are worth.
Women on the other hand have been culturally trained to think less hierarchically and more about connection, equality, and empathy. Midlife women in particular simply have deeper challenges than men in standing up and speaking up about what value they bring and how they excel and stand apart from the competition. That said, for women to be successful entrepreneurs, consultants, practitioners and small business owners, they must find new ways to strengthen their ability to authoritatively command the fees they deserve.
While asking for fair compensation remains challenging for me, I’ve created greater success this year only after figuring out beyond a reasonable doubt what I feel my services are worth. I didn’t make the numbers up — I conducted diligent, open-hearted research — with clients, competition, experts, role models, the marketplace, etc. I asked my clients how they assessed the value of our work together, and the impact it made in their lives. And I left my ego at the door when these conversations occurred.
Further, I faced the powerful realization that certain professional endeavors — such as being well-known in the media — don’t necessarily bring you clients who can pay your fees. I’ve learned (and teach my clients) that you’ll be sorely disappointed in your practice or business if you don’t figure out: 1) who your ideal client is, 2) what your optimal method and model of generating income/revenue is, and 3) how you can continually find more clients you love to serve who can pay you what you deserve. In the end, you need to determine new, sure-fire methods to generate more success doing the work you love.
The reality is that for most, asking for money IS hard, but it gets easier when we become crystal clear about what we’re worth and how we’re exceptional at what we do. Once we know in our hearts and minds what to charge, then it’s time to speak up and ask for it without reservation.
Curious about your thoughts — do you find asking for money in your practice or business hard, and if so, what makes it easier for you?
This period also saw Japan change from being a feudal society to having a market skup monet Kraków thriftiness and sinistral the Japanese with a remaining Western influence.