The Changing Reasons for Divorce

Experts have said that the two biggest reasons for divorce are money and sex for first marriages, and blended family issues for second marriages.  I am not a therapist, and although I do not inquire about “what went wrong” with the marriage, clients often volunteer such information in the course of our meetings.  During the decade or so that I have offered divorce mediation and financial analysis services, I have certainly seen sex and money as probable primary causes.  However, during the mid-2000s, I also saw more “control issues” as root causes, in that one spouse often felt that the power imbalance was too great. Often clients would tell me that their spouse was too controlling, bossy,  wanting to run their lives, or to be in charge of everything, even the minutia of daily living.   

In 2008, I was seeing more couples getting divorced because of money issues.  Often one person was spending more and their partner was uncomfortable about the spending, feeling it was too lavish, too risky, and uncontrolled.  The person spending often felt that their partner was a cheapskate and overly concerned and controlling of money.   One client told me that she wanted out of the marriage before this “house of cards falls,” and she didn’t want to be anywhere near it when it collapsed.  I felt that many of these clients were seeing ahead quite clearly about the future of their personal financial situation, even though they were not aware about the impending downturn in the economy.  I was also seeing more clients on the edge financially, and so I was referring several of them to bankruptcy attorneys for assistance and advice.

In 2009, my divorce workload was down from 2008, and family law attorneys also told me that their caseload was much lighter.  Articles in journals indicated that more people were opting to stay married, at least for a while.  After talking with clients, attorneys and other divorce professionals, it confirmed the assertion of these articles that people were staying together instead of divorcing.  Indeed, many people were either too afraid of the horrible economic situation that America was in at that time, or they felt too poor to get divorced.  Therefore, they chose to stay together and try to make things work, at least until they were more financially stable.  That made sense.  If one party is out of work and the couple has children, it is pretty difficult to divorce and pay for separate households with 50% or more of the income gone.  Moreover, many couples found their house values were worth less than their mortgage balance, and that they would not be able to sell the property without taking a huge loss.  Many others were simply overextended with their credit cards, and moving towards bankruptcy. 

Fast forward to 2010.  I am seeing a new stream of couples coming to see me to help with their divorces.  They usually have the funds to get divorced, and their economic situation is not dire, but their personal relationship has fallen apart for any number of reasons.  I don’t know if this is beginning a new trend or not.  We’ll see how the rest of the year goes – other reasons may be revealed.  With the economy recovering slowly and the unemployment situation still dire, I think that money will resurface as a primary cause of divorce for the next year or two.

This entry was posted on March 24, 2010 at 4:29 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.

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