Divorce is a complex and often painful process that involves legal, financial, and emotional aspects. The cost of divorce can vary depending on many factors, such as the state where you live, the type of divorce you choose, the amount of assets and debts you have, the level of conflict and cooperation between you and your spouse, the need for child or spousal support, and the involvement of lawyers and experts.
Here are some general estimates of the financial and emotional costs of divorce:
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Forbes research suggests that the average cost of a divorce in the U.S. is between $15,000 and $20,000, but this is not a one-size-fits-all price tag. Some represent themselves and pay only for the filing fee and their time for an uncontested divorce with no children or assets, while others can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in highly contested divorces with custody disputes and/or complex property division. There are so many factors that affect the financial cost of the divorce process that it is often impossible to even hazard a guess as to how much a divorce will cost.
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The financial impact of divorce can be long-lasting and affect your standard of living, retirement savings, tax situation, credit score, and insurance coverage. A study on “Gray Divorce” published in The Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences suggests that women over 50 who divorce face a 45% drop in their standard of living, while a man’s standard of living dropped by 21%.
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The division of years or often decades of finances that have been tangled together by the ties of marriage can leave both parties at a disadvantage as it relates to financial flexibility, retirement savings, and overall net worth. Most married couples plan their retirement savings with the idea of retiring together and sharing expenses, even planning based on their expected joint social security income, but a divorce destroys that bond and can leave all of the planning through the years to have been a wasted effort.
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The emotional cost of divorce can be even higher than the financial cost, especially if you have children. Divorce can cause stress, anxiety, depression, anger, guilt, grief, loneliness, and low self-esteem. It can also affect your relationships with your children, family, friends, and co-workers. Divorce can disrupt your routines and force you to adjust to new roles and responsibilities and can cause you to be forced to change your residence, leaving behind your community, neighbors, familiar routines, and the memories of building a life in a particular place.
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Children of divorced parents may suffer from behavioral problems, academic difficulties, emotional insecurity, and attachment issues caused by the instability brought on by divorce. Often children blame one parent or the other for the divorce, or worse, blame themselves for the fact that their parents are divorcing. These problems can be exacerbated by highly contentious divorce proceedings and the constant march back to the courthouse for modification and enforcement actions between the parents, which highly contentious custody battles during a divorce often breed.
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There are some ways to reduce the financial and emotional costs of divorce, such as choosing an alternative dispute resolution method (such as collaborative divorce or mediation), hiring a financial planner or a therapist, creating a realistic budget and a post-divorce plan, communicating respectfully and honestly with your spouse and children, seeking support from your family and friends, and taking care of your physical and mental health.
No amount of detailed information or scientific study can really quantify the cost of divorce. Sure, the financial impact of paying for the process itself can be staggering, and the division of years and often decades of accumulated finances is a daunting and depressing task. Certainly, children and relationships are affected by the fact that years of ties involving two people are suddenly dependent entirely on the relationship the children or friends have with each party/parent independently.
When parties can consciously come together and work to unravel the pieces that need to be unraveled in a way that respects the relationships that exist and tries to preserve and transition those relationships rather than sever them, a divorce can be much less costly in both financial cost and emotional toll. Collaborative Divorce is a client centered process that allows clients to choose how they transition, and to divorce without destroying those ties.