Wife No. 2 Paying for Wife No. 1? Join the Club

Nov. 6, 2009 — -- Stress over alimony payments to her husband's ex-wife nearly drove Deborah Scanlan to divorce. Helping her husband make alimony payments to his ex forced Jeanie Hitner to take on a second job. Both Massachusetts women now say they wish they'd never gotten married.

Welcome to the 2nd Wives Club.

The club, which claims 70 members and counting, consists mostly of married women who say that Massachusetts judges' rulings forced them to contribute to alimony payments for their partners' ex-wives. Together with its parent group, Mass Alimony Reform, the club is lobbying the state legislature to stop that practice and institute several reforms to alimony law.

Scanlan, the club's chairwoman, says she is paying the price for her husband's divorce. She said that because a judge took into account her $58,000 income as an executive assistant, her husband Daniel Gingras' alimony payments total $26,000 a year -- about $16,000 more than they would otherwise.

"I was absolutely horrified that I was now responsible for a portion of the support of his first wife," she said. On the day of the judge's alimony ruling in her husband's case, Scanlan said, "I left the court house and just couldn't believe that such a thing was possible."

Gingras' ex-wife did not return calls from ABCNews.com seeking comment.

How often a second wife's (or second husband's) income is factored into alimony payments nationwide is unclear, though Massachusetts doesn't appear to be unique. In Louisiana, for instance, an appellate court ruled in 1994 that a lower court had improperly reduced an alimony award to a first wife because it hadn't considered a second wife's income.

Unlike child support statutes, state laws on alimony are often vague, said Andrea Carroll, a law professor at Louisiana State University. This means, she said, that courts in other states could very well make rulings similar to the one in Louisiana.

How widespread the practice is in Massachusetts, meanwhile, is up for debate.