Sorry, a bit of a rant I know but if so many of us did it the correct way, why has it changed so much?
Remember that it wasn't very many years ago that a woman had practically no rights at all in a marriage, all her assets were considered to be chattels of her husband. Economic, emotional, and physical abuse was just as widespread if not more so than it is today. I suspect that many people were stuck in unhappy marriages through social and economic pressures, whereas these days people are less willing do put up with such.
I'm not sure it's entirely fair to say that tax payers have to pick up the bill for single parents, the vast majority of them are in work. One could equally say that tax payer's money is going as a subsidy to employers to save them from having to pay their workers a decent wage.
