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assemblyman, James Hayes, was involved in a brutal alimony battle with his wife of twenty-five years at the same time he played a leadership role in the adoption of the California no-fault statute in the 1970s. At one point, he was able to cut his wife’s alimony to $200 a month, with the trial judge telling her “to get a job,” despite her having spent a quarter-century as a homemaker and having completed only one year of college. The decision was overturned on appeal. Allen M. Parkman, No-Fault Divorce, What Went Wrong? (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), pp. 56-63; see also Weitzman, The Divorce Revolution, p. 211. A number of similar horror stories under Maryland’s 1980 statute are told in a report of a 1986 study in Montgomery County, Maryland. Rosalyn B. Bell, “Alimony and the Financially Dependent Spouse in Montgomery County, Maryland,” Family Law Quarterly 22 (Fall 1988): 225. In 1984, the federal government required states to adopt support guidelines, although judges were not required to follow them. In 1988, under the Family Support Act, Congress required states to make support guidelines binding on judges unless a written finding was issued.

12 Elaine Sorensen and Ariel Halpern, “Child Support Enforcement Is Working Better Than We Think,” Urban Institute: New Federalism, Issues and Options for States, Series A, No. A-31 (March 1999), p. 4.

13 Elaine Sorensen and Ariel Halpern, “Child Support Enforcement.”

14 The bankruptcy filing rate for single mothers is 21.3 per 1,000 compared with 14.7 for married parents, 7.2 for unmarried childless women, and 6.1 for unmarried childless men.

15 Federal Reserve Board, Survey of Consumer Finances, 1998 Full Public Dataset. Available at http://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/oss/oss2/98/scf98home.html [1/5/2003].

16 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Federal Housing Authority Single Family Mortgage Insurance Foreclosures, Cumulative by Number and Percent, 1982-2002. Unpublished Data. More than 10 percent of FHA-insured mortgages issued to single parents and originated between 1982 and 1990 have since resulted in foreclosure. The foreclosure rate for mortgages issued in the early 1980s is more than one in four.

17 Teresa A. Sullivan, Elizabeth Warren, and Jay Lawrence Westbrook, As We Forgive Our Debtors: Bankruptcy and Consumer Credit in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989). The 1981 data are based exclusively on court records, which listed only the type of case filed (joint petition or single petition), not the marital status of the person filing. We assumed that those filing jointly were married, as stipulated by the bankruptcy laws. Because there are significant legal advantages for a married couple to file on joint petition rather than two separate petitions, it is not unreasonable to assume that the single filers are not married or are separated. Data from 2001 suggest that a small number of the women who file for bankruptcy alone are in fact married, but this is offset by a small number who file jointly even though they are separated or divorced.

18 In 2000, 19.3 percent of not-married women were raising children on their own, compared with 16.9 percent in 1980. Calculated from data from U.S. Census Bureau, Table MS-1, Marital Status of the Population 15 Years Old and Over, by Sex and Race, 1950 to Present (June 29, 2001); Table FM-2, All Parent/Child Situations, by Type, Race, and Hispanic Origin of Householder or Reference Person, 1970 to Present (June 29, 2001). Available at http://landview.census.gov/population/ socdemo/hh-fam/tabFM-2.txt [11/3/02].

19 In 1981, the filing rate per 1,000 was only 2.1 for women filing alone, compared with 4.3 for men filing alone and 2.7 for couples filing jointly, providing another indication that we are likely overstating the filing rates for unmarried mothers in bankruptcy in 1981 and therefore understating the magnitude of the increase over the past two decades. Calculated from data from Warren, Westbrook, and Sullivan, As We Forgive Our Debtors; Statistical Abstract of the United States 1984, Table 50,