At a recent Strength of a Woman event on the Earn Your Leisure podcast, posted on Youtube on June 7, Mary J. Blige shared her opinion on women paying spousal support to men. She expressed her strong views against it in the premiere by telling the hosts, “It’s wack.”

The singer, entrepreneur and actress sat down with hosts Rashad Bilal and Troy Millings to discuss some of her financial struggles that arose after she was ordered to pay her ex-husband $30,000 a month in spousal support following their divorce in 2018. Blige opened up about her bellicose separation from Kendu Isaacs after accusing him of cheating on her. 

She powerfully said, “I will never allow someone to have that much power over my life or my finances, or my life ever again.”

She continued to explain that the spousal support payments put her in financial ruin.“I owed so much money I never thought I’d ever get out of debt,” the icon said. “I’m out of debt now,” Blige added. “Now I have the wisdom, and now I look at my payroll… that’s not my money. My taxes are not my money, so I’m like, ‘Pay my payroll, pay my taxes, pay my tithes.’ All of that money, I don’t even wanna see it because it doesn’t belong to me.”

She expanded her opinions to discuss a broader issue of women having to pay money to their ex-husbands after separation. Blige expressed, “It’s so wack right now that men can come at you and get alimony. When I was getting a divorce, I was like, ‘You mean to tell me I gotta pay him?! And he cheated, and he lied.”

The Power Book II: Ghost actress gave a word of advice. She bluntly suggested, “Get a prenup because I didn’t have one, and that’s why I ended up having to just give everything away.”