Question Was I morally correct in asking my (now) ex-wife to delay the divorce which she had initiated, in order to retain her much needed health insurance under my employer, until she had obtained such on her own? Or was she correct in her assertion that it would have been morally incorrect for her remain married to me, regardless of her health needs, due to the example shown to our children when she was meeting and dating others?

Accepted:
June 16, 2006

Comments

Under Federal Law (COBRA), companies with 20 or more employees arerequired to offer health care coverage at the group rate to formerspouses of employees for three years after a divorce. In somestates, companies with fewer employees are required to do the same. So,while it would be less expensive for your former wife to have been covered as a spouseunder your family plan, it’s probably just a mistake to believe thatyour former wife will not have health insurance coverage unless shedelays the divorce.

Butsuch an observation doesn’t really touch the deep and complex issuesthat your and your former wife’s arguments raise about the nature andvalue of marriage.

Let’s imagine that there were no such federallaw guaranteeing a three-year continuation of health insurance coveragefor former spouses. If you stayed married for the sake of providingyour wife health insurance coverage, wouldn’t you be doing somethingdishonest? Wouldn’t you be pretending, for the purpose of defrauding ahealth insurance company, that you were married, when in fact you werenothing of the sort? I think that we all recognize the possibility oflegal but pretend marriages. When we learn that two people married sothat one of them could get a green card, and when we learn further thatthey hardly know one another, have no affection for one another, do notlive together, in fact spend no time together, and have significantintimate relationships with other people, I think that we’re inclinedto say that, although they are “technically” or legally married, theyare really nothing of the sort. They are just pretending to be marriedfor the purpose of gaining one of the legal benefits of marriage. Whilethe prima facie immorality of deception can be overridden by other moral considerations, it does seem as if there is a sort of deception involved in the case of “green-card marriages.”

Youdon’t say enough about your relationship with your former wife to helpus to decide whether your marriage, if you had stayed married, wouldhave been a pretend marriage in the way that the green-card marriage Idescribe seems to me to be a pretend marriage. The argument that yourformer wife offered against staying married seems to suggest that sheherself believed that the activities in which she wanted to engage–“meeting and dating others”– were incompatible with the norms ofmarriage, and she didn’t want your children to acquire what to her mindwas a false view about the norms of marriage (namely, that the practiceof meeting and dating others was compatible with marriage). Such a marriage, on her view, would be a mockery of a marriage.

Butis it? Of course, there is no book to which we can appeal in order tolook up the “rules of marriage.” So the question is really whether itis a good idea for us to hold ourselves to this norm.

Studieson the frequency of adultery, both now and in the past, suggest that,despite what we commonly say marriage ought to be, a large proportionof married people do not live up to that norm. In fact, it appears thathuman beings go through pretty predictable cycles of sexualsatisfaction with their partners, with infatuation and high levels ofsexual excitement with a given partner typically lasting for only a fewyears, to be followed (if not interrupted) by deep affection andcomfort. It seems that, biologically speaking, our sexual instinctsdrive us toward “serial monogamy”– that is, towards a series ofmonogamous relationships. Such drives were likely to have been to theevolutionary advantage of our distant ancestors (couples stayedtogether long enough to get their progeny through the extremelydependent stage of infancy (approx. four years), but they “moved on”for the sake of gaining more biologically diverse progeny). I don’tknow whether life is more or less complex for our own children, and sowhether the lessons that they need to learn in order to be successfuladults are more difficult and time-consuming (approx. 18 or moreyears). Yet it does seem that children have many fewer adults in theirlives on whom they can constantly rely to provide them withinstruction, guidance, and support that they need in order to flourishas adults. Parents are expected to do most of this work. In thiscontext, it seems, the practice of serial monogamy– if it involves theconstant break-up and reconfiguration of families-- does not serve theinterests of children very well. (In fact, I’m not sure that, in theend, it serves well the interests of the adults involved, even thosewithout children. These instincts encourage a kind of relationshiptreadmill, a constant quest not only for the necessarily short-lived,highly sexually charged infatuation, but also for the imaginary“soul-mate” who has all of the best features of all of one’s formerlovers and none of their flaws, a quest that is bound to lead todisappointment and loneliness.)

The answer that socialconservatives offer to the challenges we face is a much stronger moralcondemnation of sexual infidelity and the promotion of legal obstaclesto divorce. Given the kinds of beings that we are, it seems to me thatsuch an approach would lead only to destructive self-flagellation,hypocrisy, and misery.

Iwould advocate instead having a muchless rigid conception of marriage. Marriage is a complex socialinstitution designed to serve many different and important functions,some of which, in our complex and rapidly changing society, are at oddswith one another. Why couldn’t your wife date other people and still bemarried to you– in the sense of being your beloved life partner andco-parent? If the norm against such a marriage were dropped, I suspectthat there would be a whole lot less confusion in people’s minds aboutthe significance of their sexual instincts– no, it doesn’t mean thatyou don’t still love and cherish your spouse; no, it doesn’t mean thanyou should live in separate households and be with your children muchless frequently; it just means that your biological instincts arekicking in. If you need to “date” in order to get it out of yoursystem, then that’s what you need to do. (Of course, for humans,biology isn't destiny, and many people reasonably choose the goods thatmonogamy allows, even if it involves some short-term frustration.)

So, to return to yourquestion about health insurance. I do not believe that any deceptionwould be involved if you and your spouse had a less conventionalmarriage. There are good reasons for health insurance companies tooffer family rates that cover children and spouses, and these reasonsapply to a wide range of types of relationships and families. If,however, you have in mind discarding all aspects of your relationshipthat are typically characteristic of marriage, and preserving only thelegal fiction of marriage, then it does seem to me that there is a kindof dishonesty involved. But, again, whether the prima facie immorality of such deception is overridden by other moral considerations is an open question.

I agree with Jyl Gentzler that marriage might for some people take the form of an open relationship, where extra-marital relationships were permissible; and if you find this form of relationship satisfactory, then keeping your then-wife covered by your insurance even while she engaged in extra-marital relationships would be permissible.

But I hold a slightly different view of the issue of decption in this case, a view that leads to a different judgment about keeping your then-wife insured even if the relationship was for all intents and purposes over. I think the analogy with "Green Card" marriages in this case a weak one. Green Card marriages are different from cases like the one you describe because Green Card marriages are frauds from the very beginning. They never achieved the status of real marriage in the sense they don't involve relationships of love, commitment, sexual congress, or reproduction. Your relationship, I take it, was at the start a real relationship. Given that your relationship was a real one at the start, it was proper that your wife was covered by your insurance.

It remains in my judgment morally permissible and not a deception to delay your divorce and continue to cover your wife under your insurance for a limited time (a few years strikes me as a reasonable) for these reasons:

(1) Any reasonable person should understand that marriages commonly end. I believe that currently in the U.S. there is somewhere around 50/50 chance of it. Insurance companies know this.

(2) It often takes people, especially those with poor educational or employment histories, a long time to find sources of medical insurance in the U.S. (This because U.S. institutions are negligent in not offering medical coverage. According to the Census Bureau's 2005 Current Population Survey [CPS], there were 45.8 million uninsured individuals in 2004, or 15.7% of the civilian non-institutionalized population. This state of affairs is morally wrong.)

(3) Allowing people to go without medical care who have entered the institution of marriage in good faith but whose marriages have nevertheless failed is unecessarily cruel and socially irresponsible in a society of plenty like ours. It would also be irresponsible to your children to expose them unnecessarily to the risk of losing their mother or having her seriously impaired for lack of insurance.

So, if, wherever you live, the state or other institutions provides an easy alternative to your covering your wife, keeping her covered and delaying your divorce would be unecessary and morally inadvisable. But if no reasonable alternative exist, letting her go uncovered would be wrong.