Opinionated? You bet!
Bear in mind that following applies to air carrier operations. If you were wondering about having altn NOTAMS when going cross-country in your KitFox, disregard it.
As far as I know there's no explicit legal requirement to have NOTAMs for FPLed alternate available at dispatch phase. However, one believing that provision of any-OPS: "appropriate NOTAM/AIS information should be available" doesn't cover this case shouldn't be let anywhere near aeroplane without proper boarding pass.
Airport that you can't get NOTAMs for is useless to you, either as destination or alternate. Period.
If you think that filing a flight plan is just a bureaucratic formality that has no major effect on your everyday flying, there is something very wrong about the way you were taught the Air law.
Trouble with refiling a flight-plan? Dude, I'd rather have all the trouble of the world in the planing phase than single trouble in flight.