Introduction

Traditionally, both marital property rules and maintenance rules had their justifications in broader notions of “community,” “solidarity,” “equal treatment,” and “marital partnership.” As long as divorce occurred rarely and most families consisted of only one breadwinner, society could live with such broad justifications. Both spouses were presumed to have made a balanced effort in this community of living. In the case of divorce for such families, the stay-at-home wife was obviously in need of support, and since the norm was life-long marriage – the husband was expected to take responsibility for that support. However, because these justifications are so broad and vague, it is not always clear what constitutes the essence of the justification: Is the core justification one of need – “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” or one of desert, according to the spouses' work efforts or their contributions to the surplus acquired during marriage? In society at large, these two factors are often contradictory: Persons who contribute the most in the form of taxes have, as a rule relatively, few unsatisfied needs and consequently receive little in return from, for example, social security. In marriage, the two factors overlap more often. Normally, the reason one of the spouses, usually the wife, has a greater need for money is that she cares for the children and does the housework, and not because her actual contributions are small.