Not only is the economy taking a toll on marriages, but it’s also affecting how people are timing their divorce.
To explain: His financial woes have strained the marriage of Mr. and Mrs. Investment Banker. She wants a divorce settlement right now based on his earnings history. His attorney advises him to wait until next year, when his tax return will prove he isn’t worth nearly as much.
“A lot of couples who have been living the good life have begun the process of re-evaluating their lives together,” said Jacalyn F. Barnett, a Manhattan divorce lawyer. “In the past year, I have seen how the dramatic changes in our economy have had a dramatic effect on married people, especially those who have been used to earning high salaries, and many of those couples can no longer handle the stress.”
“Timing is everything. The date of valuation of assets can make all the difference in the world depending upon when an action was started,” Manhattan divorce lawyer Jacalyn Barnett added.
Ms. Barnett noted that between Labor Day and New Year’s Day, “there is always a flood of new divorces.” In other words, if spring and summer are the seasons for marrying, fall and winter tend to be the high seasons for divorce. “These are the prime periods of evaluation,” Ms. Barnett said.
“People simply can’t afford to get divorced. They can’t afford the legal fees; they can’t afford having two separate places to live,” said Michele Weiner-Davis, a Colorado social worker.
Unlucky in love, and also unlucky in labor: the unemployment rate of male high school and college graduates for this past October reveal similarly stark differences: 11.4 percent versus 4.5 percent. Those with only a high school degree also experience higher unemployment rates while married simply because they are much more likely to be married while in their early 20s — an age with recent unemployment rates that are nearly twice that of those over 25.
In more recent decades, however, economic downturns have not led to slowdowns in divorce. The divorce rate soared during the stagflation of the mid-1970s, continued to rise during the deep blue-collar recession of the early 1980s, and thereafter stabilized at historically high levels.
An article in Time by Belinda Luscombe sheds more light on the subject. She quotes Philadelphia lawyer Neil Stein of Stein & Glazer: “I’ve had several clients come to me recently and say, ‘I’ve wanted to get divorced for years but didn’t want to give up half of my business. Now that my business is not worth anything, wouldn’t it be a good time to do it?’”
It’s a good time if you want to get out on the cheap. Plunging real estate prices mean that anyone who has to buy out his or her spouse likely will keep the family home for much less money than it would have cost two years ago.
“In more stable economic times, there is no reason to believe that a spouse’s salary or bonus or 401(k) or pension will change, so there is less strategy involved in terms of timing a divorce with the help of a lawyer and an accountant,” said Mr. Devack, a lawyer in East Meadow, N.Y.. “These are the kinds of issues that only come to the forefront during hard times.”
Add A Comment