column
Fried – The Politics Column
What Spouse Splitting has to do with a Teenage Room
The debate about spouse splitting is one of those that keeps repeating itself without any meaningful result
© Illustration: Sebastian König/Stern; Photo: Henning Kretschmer/Stern
There are debates that repeat themselves but never get anywhere. For example the one about spouse splitting. It won’t be any different this time.
The SPD proposes an abolition of the spouse splitting. The green ones too. There are supporters of this demand from society and science, but the Union does not want to change anything. That’s how you know it from 2023. The funny thing is that it was exactly the same 22 years ago.
SPD Vice Renate Schmidt wanted to at least change the marriage splitting in 2001. Schleswig-Holstein’s Prime Minister Heide Simonis wanted to abolish it. The SPD also targeted it in the lead proposal for the party congress; the German Institute for Economic Research supported the demand, as did ZDF news presenter Petra Gerster. The financial policy spokeswoman for the Greens, Christine Scheel, advocated saving money when splitting spouses and from that – Attention! – to pay basic child security. The Union held back then and still does today. Everything else has remained the same for her, the parliamentary group leader in 2001 and 2023: Friedrich Merz.
Lars Klingbeil was 23 years old at the time, studied political science in Hanover and also worked in the constituency office of Gerhard Schröder, a member of the Bundestag. I was 34 and had recently been a parliamentary correspondent. Klingbeil is now in the prime of life and has now – as the I-don’t-know-how-many-politician – called for the marriage splitting to be abolished. I’m not as old as I sometimes feel, but I’ve had enough experience to predict to the head of the SPD with almost no risk: it’ll never work out.
The debate about spouse splitting needs to be modernized
The abolition of spouse splitting is a debate that is repeated again and again without consequences, i.e. comparable to the discussion with a teenager about airing his room. There are debates whose plot never changes, including citizen insurance and the reintroduction of a wealth tax. What changes are the performers. So the debate about spouse splitting is a bit like Agatha Christie’s classic “The Mousetrap”, which has been performed in London since 1952. In Great Britain, however, spouse splitting has long since been abolished.
The debate always ends in the same way, both in substance and in process. At some point you end up with Article 6 of the Basic Law, according to which marriage and family are under the special protection of the state order, from which the advocates of splitting derive the spouses’ freedom of choice as far as gainful employment is concerned. At some point, a high-ranking, older social democrat steps up and exits the debate. In 2001 it was the SPD faction leader Peter Struck. In 2023, the chancellor himself has just put the brakes on his party leader. The motive is always the same: no more trouble! The veto of the FDP Finance Minister is almost irrelevant.
The example of a well-paid dentist and his wife who does not work, who paints her nails all day, is as much a part of the debate about spouse splitting as whipped cream is with strawberry cake. The immense tax benefit that accrues to this pair is often cited as a chilling illustration of the effect of splitting. At this point, I am absolutely in favor of modernizing the debate. Not only have I been treated by a dentist for years. Two thirds of prospective dentists are women today. We should be talking about the single-earning dentist and her non-working husband who paints his nails all day.