The family court helps preserve the class system (hat tip, spearhead).

I found this over at Bill Price’s place. My comments will be in-line… I may not be upper middle class but there is a branch of the extended family that is.  So from observation…

It’s kind of unusual to hear about these kinds of brutal divorces amongst the educated elite these days. Generally, women of the upper classes know better than to blow it all in a knock down, drag out fight.

It is seen as tacky. The upper classes are expected to be able to keep their affairs, be it business or romantic, discreet and out of the papers. They also are aware that the lower orders are jealously looking at them. Photos of a duchess topless… sell, while those of the more pretty commoner next door are ignored.

So, when you look into the background of the guys who get nailed, it often turns out that they are what you’d call bootstrappers; ordinary men who made it by virtue of hard work and talent. The self-made business owner, the bright professional from a middle or working class family, or talented athlete from the farm or inner city is typically the guy who gets reamed the hardest. Even at the very top it tends to be these types. Take Paul McCartney for example.

Well, that is sort of me:my parents were teachers and most of the family have made their living in sales or farm working. I am the exception — got into a professional school. And it took decades to understand how the elite think.

The real elites breed amongst themselves, and they practice a sort of “keep it in the family” marital regime. I assume it involves extensive use of prenups, but there’s also the private school culture that is as geared toward keeping their kids segregated from the unwashed, and therefore more likely to marry into their own class, as it is toward giving them a better education.

This occurs less in the South Island than in Auckland, where I grew up: but throughout NZ the elite send their kids to single gender schools with good academic and sporting traditions. And most of the rich families have all their assets in a trust. Part of the premarital ritual is a meeting with the family lawyers where the terms of who has what are spelt out, quite bluntly. And like marries like — generally the trust kids marry each other. If the bootstrappers marriage stays together, his children then join this bunch… breaking into the elite.

For all the talk about rising inequality in the US, there’s little mention of this divorce gap. Sure, they’ve finally started talking about single mothers, but this steady attrition of talented, upwardly mobile men has been going on for decades. There’s no more effective and insidious tactic for keeping upstarts in their place than ruining them through their women. And it doesn’t even need to be personal. Just make it policy and let the system do its work.

But you need to keep yourself out of the system. The bootstrapper’s problem s that he needs to choose a spouse that is going to stay with him and not move into the female solipsistic system that ends up with divorce and poverty. I should add that female bootstrappers have the same problem. Because they are not old money, they are not acceptable as mates for the elite. Their children, if in the elite schools (which will take a considerable amount of money) and able to do the elite avocations — which involve horses, skis and  boats — may just be able to marry in. But they need to have been trained in correct behaviour.

You see, the elite follow the French, not Oprah. Oprah is vulgar, and her ideas of self esteem are distasteful. Children are not noble: they are little savages that need to be trained in the rules of civilized conduct: from eating and etiquette to the polite way to fornicate and defraud.  The elite have no illusions of being good or achieving salvation. But they insist you work out your damnation discreetly, and above all, politely. They will quietly withdraw from rudeness and noise.

You can see that with the American dynasties. The Bushes are still involved in politics, but the Kennedy family, who are now in elite society,  no longer run for office. They are old money. Their influence comes from the charities they support, the boards they sit on, the chairs they endow. Even being a senator is a little tacky. And those republicans are so middle class. Let the family courts impoverish them. Let us look down, and enjoy the end of the time of the English Empires as we listen to the music of empire (from Elgar to Bernstein) and drink a nice Antipodean Syrah. For they have forgotten they live of the rents of that middle class they despise. If the economy tanks, their wealth will also shrink.