Long ago and far away, title and control of all of a woman’s property vested in her husband upon marriage. In exchange, the husband became responsible for support of the wife for the remainder of her life. The support obligation continued even through divorce, unless the bad conduct of the wife was the reason for the divorce.
This is the common law foundation linking misconduct –fault – to alimony. Over time, the law came to require that any woman seeking alimony first prove that her husband’s conduct rather than her own was the cause of the marital breakup.