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# Rash of celebrity divorces expose new world reality
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/rash-of-celebrity-divorces-expose-new-world-reality-2/
- Published: 2006-11-14T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-25T01:15:23.000Z
- Author: David Pisarra
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

No one can say for certain what causes a marriage to fall apart. Certainly, the glare of public life must put the strongest of marriages under immense stress, that, coupled with the dynamics of two people who each want to become superstars in their own right seems like a recipe for disaster.

I have my own feelings on why certain marriages break up. One look at “Being Bobby Brown” or “Newlyweds” and any sane person begins to question why they married in the first place. But this is where the ancient Latin saying, “De gustibus non est disputandum” — there’s no accounting for taste — comes into stark relief.

We like what we like. Some people like apples, some don’t.

The thing about celebrity marriages (and who really doesn’t like to gossip about the lives of the rich and famous?) is that they are excellent examples of the trends in law and life. More and more women are working and rising through the corporate ladders or building their own businesses, becoming more successful than their husbands.

Certainly in the rarified world of female celebrities, Whitney is a step above most celebrities. She is that rare combination of chanteuse, actress and model. Her earning power is significantly higher than her soon to be ex-husband’s.

Jessica Simpson, too, certainly earned more in the last year of their marriage than her husband. Her movie deals, personal appearances and endorsements reportedly earned the couple more than $30 million. Half of that (after agents, managers, and the tax man) would be Lachey’s.

The value of a pre-nuptial in marriages like these is best evidenced in the Britney/K- Fed divorce. Allegedly, the pre-nuptial called for annual increases in his payout based on the years the two were married. By timing her divorce filing just before she re-launches a career, and likely within the grace period of her two-year anniversary, she limits the amount of spousal support that she will have to pay her ex.

This kind of strategizing is nothing new in divorces. It was said that the reason that Tom Cruise filed for his divorce so close to the 10-year mark in his marriage to Nicole Kidman was that he wanted to avoid having a marriage of long duration, which is pegged at 10 years in California. That would have meant the court could have kept jurisdiction over the amount of spousal support Tom paid to Nicole, theoretically, for life. Certainly, with his career and historical income levels, he wanted to cap his liability to Nicole. — is that a married person has a right to be maintained in the custom to which they have become accustomed to living, even after they are no longer married. This translates into one thing — spousal support.

Spousal support and child support are based on guidelines, which can be overcome by agreement, but in general, the guidelines are a starting place. The state guidelines are determined by a complex formula which requires a computer program to determine the amounts. The purpose of spousal support is to help the party receiving it get back on their feet and start taking care of themselves.

These days, that means more and more women are paying spousal rather than receiving it. That change in our societal mores is due to several factors, not the least of which is that women are earning more, and men are fighting to take an active role in the parenting of their children.

Being a father is the most permanent relationship a man will ever have. Fathers are now recognizing that they need to be, and more importantly, want to be, more than a checkbook to their children. Fathers want to have an active role in how their children are raised, and that means they are spending less time at work and are beginning to see a leveling off of their income, as they dedicate more time to their children.

The balancing of the sexes is being played out in the ways in which spousal support is being re-configured. The old presumption that the man always pays and the woman always receives, is no longer the case.

The reason that couples like Britney and Kevin have pre-nuptials is because the stigma of spousal support being a woman’s right is no longer appropriate. The world continues to change rapidly. It used to be that only a man who was willing to be seen as weak would even accept spousal support. That is no longer the case.

Where historically a marriage was about the division of labor between bread-winner and homemaker, today, marriages are more about joint acquisition of assets. That combined effort results in greater assets, but it also means that a man has more of a vested interest in his wife’s income. When a couple works together to create a public persona, such as Nick and Jessica, he is certainly entitled to a percentage of the income that it derives. The same rule applies when a woman builds a career or a business, and the man provides emotional, spiritual and financial help.

The days in which a man’s ego would prevent him from taking money from his ex-wife have begun to fall by the wayside, as gender equality is reaching further and further into society. Though I am sure that some men still decline the money, and that some women will bristle at the thought of having to pay their ex spousal support, it’s a new world, and to have it otherwise would be to create a double standard. We are trying to get away from those.

David Pisarra is a business development lawyer for the Santa Monica firm Pisarra & Grist. He

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on November 14, 2006.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/111406.pdf?ref=smdp.com)