Post-divorce Housekeeping

I received a very interesting email from a client. He asked me whether if he has a duty to maintain his wife post-divorce to the same standard of living that she had become accustomed to during the course of the marriage, whether his ex-wife still had a duty, assuming he was still single, to cook, clean, iron and wash clothes for him as she had done during the course of the marriage.

The unfortunate reality of the matter is that there is never a duty on any person when married, single or divorced to cook, clean, iron and wash clothes for another person. You cannot force somebody to do that.

In many households there is a mutual understanding between the parties that the one party will be the bread-winner and earn the money while the other party will attend to the household duties. Post-divorce in a divorce order you could never have a clause stating that one person must carry on with these domestic duties.

Traditionally the lady in the marriage was seen to be the party who would stay home, with the children, and cook and clean. Times are now changing. In fact in my practise I see more and more ladies being the breadwinners as opposed to the men.

In a few of my cases I have in fact encountered “stay-at-home-dads” as opposed to “stay-at-home-moms”. In these situations, while the woman goes out to work, the man stays at home looking after the children, and attending to the cooking and cleaning. This is still however in the minority of cases.

In today’s poor economic climate, it is becoming important and essential for both parties to go out and work these days. Couples can simply no longer afford for one spouse to stay at home anymore while the other works.

Children are going to crèche from an early age these days, sometimes when they are only four to six months old. A couple can no longer financially afford for the mother to stay at home looking after baby and attending to the household duties.

These days the duty to clean, cook, wash clothes and iron very often falls on the domestic worker. Domestic workers are playing a bigger role than they did in the past as when both spouses work, neither has time to attend to the household duties anymore.

To answer the query I received, the duty to pay maintenance post-divorce is not linked in any way to any duty to cook, clean, iron and wash clothes. The man would therefore unfortunately for him still have to pay maintenance to his ex-wife but she would not be obliged in any way to do anything for him.

Is this fair? In my opinion yes. Nobody is anybody else’s personal servant. A divorce should result in a clean break between the parties. If post-divorce the ex-wife would continue to attend to the household duties, there would be no clean break.

The best solution in that situation may be for the newly divorced man to engage the services of a domestic worker if he is not able to attend to the household duties himself. It was never really and still is not unfortunately for him the duty of his ex-wife to cook, clean, iron and wash clothes for him.