My opponent seeks to discredit my argument by comparing spousal support (and similar institutions) to undeserved handouts that leech on the successful. Unfortunately, the situations he mentions differ completely in their particulars from spousal support (NOTE: I will be using spousal support throughout the debate to refer to alimony payments, maintenance, and similar support systems). For one, spousal support is only required after the dissolution of marriage, in which two people are recognized under the law as being committed partners, with an obligation to support each other during their marriage. This is completely unlike the situations described, in which unfamiliar people are forced to redistribute wealth for the greater good. Additionally, my opponent simply brings these situations up, and in no way analyzes the ways that they are supposedly similar to spousal support, devaluing my position in no way at all.In the second part of his argument, he brings up the fact that couples with no kids and one unemployed spouse can break up, and alimony will still be required. Neglecting the facts that these unemployed spouses are likely to be doing other duties in the home, and that these situations are not a majority of alimony cases, it is my opponents duty to argue that there should be no spousal support whatsoever, so mentioning specific situations sympathetic to his assertion will not help him.In addition, he postulates that a spouse who stayed home to take care of kids, clean the house, run errands, etc, would receive more in spousal support than it would have cost the working spouse to pay for a nanny, personal assistant, and housekeeper. I will be analyzing a hypothetical situation similar to this. Lets say we have Family X, composed of spouse A, spouse B, and a child. Spouse B stayed home, performing the aforementioned duties, while spouse A worked as a manager. Let's say they had a kid at the time of their marriage, and divorced 10 years later. We will now calculate the costs of a nanny, personal assistant, and housekeeper, and compare them to the cost of alimony. To be conservative, we will say in a situation in which the spouses never married, yet spouse A had a child, that per day spouse A needed a mid range live in nanny, 1.5 hours of work a day by a housekeeper, and 1.5 by someone to run errands (remember, we are trying to replace the amount of work done by the other spouse completely, so these figures are accurate, and even on the low end). assuming it will cost 500 a week for the nanny ( http://www.care.com... ), $10 an hour for the housekeeper (will cost this or more because of transportation), and $20 an hour for an errand runner ( http://www.lasplash.com... ) (these rates are all at the low end) this would end up costing approximately 40,000 dollars a year (ignoring costs of housing the nanny), a figure affordable only to those in the upper echelons of society. With the average American Wage somewhere around 40,000, it doesn't take much analysis to see that my opponents idea of just hiring workers to replace a spouse is much more expensive than the alimony required if he had been married in that time. Even eliminating the cost of the nanny, the spouse would be paying ~15,000 dollars a year, usually above the average alimony payments for someone making 40,000 dollars a year.This does not even begin to address the fact that the jobs the stay at home spouse performs during marriage and not transferable to a job market, and the time performing them will be time unusable for advancement in a career, or to outright make money. When people enter into a marriage, they should be ready to support each other to a reasonable extent for life if the situation calls for it, regardless if differences arise some time in the marriage.

What exactly is social stability? Do you mean it would look bad if the divorced wife had to go on welfare because her husband was no longer supporting her? How about you require all wealthy bachelors go out and find a poor family and they must donate 10% of their income to them for "social stability." How about the government requires all large businesses give X number of dollars to charities in their community for "social stability." How about the government require all retired teachers spend 3 hours each week tutoring struggling kids so they are more likely to go to college and get great jobs and contribute to public funds thereby encouraging "social stability." How about the government inspect every household and force people who don't volunteer to do so or face a fine for the sake of "social stability"and as far this whole notion of lost income and fairness: I am sure there are plenty of examples of couples who divorced and had no kids and one CHOSE to simply not work and it did nothing for the relationship by not working, but yet they get X number of dollars every month for 10 years simply because they were the poor ones in the relationship.Furthermore, even if they had kids and the one parent didn't work so they could babysit, clean the house, run errands, etc. One, they chose to do so and to the amount of money the working partner is required to pay in alimony is often more than what it would have cost them to pay for a nanny, personal assistant, housekeeper, etc.