I have been struggling with the concept that Ruth Madoff is forfeiting her single name accounts. I think if she knew, if she participated, if those funds had been stashed in her name, then she is rightly being asked or forced to give them up, those funds are in effect stolen property.
But if she brought those funds to the marriage, earned them thru legitimate business ventures, then they are hers.
It is not like I am torn up one way or the other, but what I am bristling against is the idea that as independent, successful married women, our single name assets can get mired in our partners business issues or criminal enterprise.
I know people all believe she knew and maybe she did, but there is knowing and then there is knowing and there is the fact some people lie and conceal things more successfully. Did the Governor of South Carolina's wife know about his Argentinian mistress? Did Elizabeth Edwards know?
I am not quibbling with who knew what. The fact is - until recently as married women, we could not own property and I think this is a slippery slope, I think this is a neat way for the Federal Courts, stacked with Bush appointees, to hack away at our rights. At my right as a woman to own my own, single name property. I think once it becomes part of the code, once there is precident, then sneaky lawyers, with an alternative agenda, can make hay.
Sometimes the punish may well fit the crime or presumed crime, until they bend the precident and twist it, to suit their own neferious purposes.
So that is the question that lingers for me... what is next, which little seemingly uninportmant right will they pick at next?
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