Pricing note

Divorce

Assets, legal bills, support obligations, and a long financial tail.

Divorce can divide property, add legal costs, change housing expenses, and create long-term support obligations. The circumstances vary wildly, but the financial disruption is large enough to move the appraisal.

Score: divorced −$50,000; not divorced +$30,000.

Divorce statistics

  • The state figures placed Nevada at the highest divorce rate and Massachusetts at the lowest.
  • About 82% of married couples were reported to reach a fifth anniversary, 52% a fifteenth, and 5% a fiftieth. Death as well as divorce reduces the later figures.
  • Roughly 11% of the adult population was currently divorced in that set of statistics.
  • One custody survey reported full support payment from 90.2% of fathers with joint custody, 79.1% with visitation privileges, and 44.5% with no visitation.
  • In the same body of survey material, 40% of mothers said they had interfered with a father’s visitation to punish an ex-spouse.
  • Rates and family-law outcomes vary substantially by state, age at marriage, education, income, and whether it is a first or later marriage.

A very expensive split

One first-person account published by InjusticeLine described a 25-year marriage with no children followed by four years of divorce proceedings. The husband, Michael, reportedly began the case with a $3.5 million net worth and had three affairs during the marriage, including one with the woman who later became his second wife.

During the proceedings he reportedly paid more than $100,000 in temporary alimony, transferred all equity in the marital home, provided a paid-off vehicle, and left more than $60,000 in household furnishings. He later filed for bankruptcy.

The final order reportedly required $1,000 per month in lifetime alimony. After bankruptcy, the second wife said that amounted to roughly half of Michael’s take-home pay while their household supported two young children, a mortgage, and a car payment.

She also claimed the former wife had moved another working man into the paid-off home but that they could not prove cohabitation to the court. Meanwhile, the former wife received assets from the bankruptcy estate in addition to ongoing support.

It is one side of one bitter case—not a neutral court record—but it captures why divorce can carry a long financial tail even after the decree is signed.