How To Prepare For Divorce
76Protect Yourself
I’m a lawyer and strongly argue against divorce. The greatest amount of happiness and joy is derived by two people when they are anxiously engaged in keeping a marriage together and rearing exemplary children who, because of the happiness hopefully they see in you, develop a spiritual peace that cannot be obtain any other way.
But if you have tried everything, including a visit with your priest or bishop, and maybe a marriage counselor or an attorney, and there is no way you can reconcile the differences with your spouse, here’s what you must think about and do immediately.
Start taking the right precautions now while you are together so that you can protect both his and her financial security for later.
Reduce Unnecessary Expenses:
Meet with your spouse and agree to cancel utilities and other bills. Divorces can be heart wrenching, but they can also tear away at your pocketbook. You will need money later on and this is a way to begin to save money. Sell off your personal property that you do not need or want anymore. Each of you may have to find smaller quarters, condo, apartment space, or a room with a friend or your parents. That may rule out any extensive storage space like a basement or garage.
On the contrary, you may want to keep certain items that just won’t fit into either of your new quarters. Sit down and divide out the personal property that belongs to both of you and decide which pieces to keep. It may be necessary for you to rent a storage shed until you get relocated.
Credit Cards:
Cancel all of your jointly owned credit cards. You both should agree to cancel the cards and get separate ones or stop using them. You need to cancel the plastic and joint bank accounts because of the chance that the other spouse will create all kinds of different charges, leaving one of you in a bind, stuck with paying them back. Canceling the cards now can save you money that you will need later.
You may want to separate the jointly owned bank accounts. If you have joint bank accounts, divide the money before one of the spouses gets greedy, taking off with the other’s part of that asset. Sit down around a table with an adding machine. List all outstanding bills and make arrangements to pay them before splitting up. If you open new bank accounts, do it at different banks to eliminate confusion later.
401K and Pensions:
Stop contributing to combined accounts like 401K and pension plans. Talking to HR at your place of employment usually does this. Make the necessary arrangements so that your money is not being added to this account. You have to do this until you find out what will happen to those accounts and who will benefit from them.
Supporting Your Family
By all means, keep your job or go out and find one as soon as possible. We are experiencing one of the most severe financial downturns in the history of America, one in which many people are being laid off daily. The best advice one could give you is to delay the divorce until both spouses have good-paying jobs so that this doesn’t work an inordinate hardship on the stay-at-home spouse and the children.
Protect Yourself
You have to make sure that you are protecting yourself and are able to provide for your family. There are many cases where the wage earner, especially if that is a man, has a history of sleeping with a mistress and ends up one night, unannounced, leaving his wife and kids destitute without any clue as to where he has gone. I wrote this article to prep you for this dreaded day that I hope never happens. This article was designed to open communication channels before a breakup occurs so that things don’t have to get ugly in divorce, but also so that we might make inroads against the staggering statistics showing that in America one of every two married people end up divorced.
Organized divorce is hard enough on both spouses, but imagine the trauma the children encounter. The Americans for Divorce Reform estimate that “Probably, 40 or possibly even 50 percent of marriages will end in divorce if current trends continue.” This statement hides the details about distribution because it differs depending on age. The following chart comes from a blog called “Divorce Rate.”
In the following re consider Age and divorce rate for first the woman, then the man:
Under 20 years old: women 27.6% and men 11.7%
20 to 24 years old: women 36.6% and men 38.8%
25 to 29 years old: women 16.4% and men 22.3%
30 to 34 years old: women 8.5% and men11.6%
35 to 39 years old: women 5.1% and men 6.5%
Also, the fifty percent figure is only for first
marriages. It is 67 percent for second marriages and 74 percent for third marriages,
according to Jennifer Baker of the Forest Institute of Professional Psychology
in Springfield, Missouri. Here’s a different set of stats. The following come
from Enrichment Journal and differ somewhat
from the above, but not by much:
The divorce
rate in
America for first marriage is 41%
The divorce
rate in
America for second marriage is 60%
The divorce
rate in
America for third marriage is 73%
The divorce rate in
America for childless couples and couples with children
According to Discovery Channel, couples with children have a slightly lower
rate of divorce than childless couples.
Sociologists believe that childlessness is also a common cause of divorce. The absence of children leads to loneliness and weariness and even in the United States at least 66 per cent of all divorced couples are childless.
Divorce Rates
In many cases, communication does not take place between husband and wife beforehand and the usual scenario is that the wife is left with all of the expenses of raising the kids and paying the rent and other bills without much, if any, income. You might think that that should begin to get into the felony category of abandonment. While it is a quasi-criminal act, unfortunately being a runaway husband may not be a felony, but it is definitely a misdeed.
Abandonment is a Crime
The crime of abandonment can earn the evildoer a jail sentence. In the five boroughs of the Greater New York there is a separate department with lawyers to look after the interests of deserted women who have no money and are likely to become “a charge on the county.” In New York if the suffering spouse has money, even a small amount in a bank account, she is not likely to become a charge on the county and cannot have the country arrest the husband and put him in jail. That is one of several technicalities that must be overcome.
Divorce is Ugly – But Here’s The Ugliest Part
If he leaves the state of New York, he cannot be arrested. The best advice for the wife is to look around for him herself and stay in direct contact with the magistrate’s office. Some of these offices advise the afflicted spouse to tell the husband she has no money and one of the kids is sick and for him to return home and help. He may feel some responsibility and sorrow over the kids, so before he shows up she is to arrange to have a magistrate present to haul him away to jail. The judge will usually order him to pay at a minimum $500 bond. Unable to do so, he goes to jail until the time for a hearing at which time the wife is awarded a certain amount of money per week to feed her family and pay the rent. An indigent or uncooperative husband is jailed until a hearing can take place.
Figure Out What You Can Do To Support Your Family
If you are not getting any income from your spouse, you will have to do something to support your monthly needs. You may want to ask your ‘soon-to-be ex’ if he/she can help you financially until the divorce proceedings are over. This is only possible if you are maintaining friendship through the divorce. If you are fighting over everything and not getting along, you need to retain legal counsel and have them arrange for this because it is the right thing to do. A judge or an arbiter won’t necessarily require an equal division of assets. The one left with the kids will get most of the funds and usually the one controlling the cash will have to do all that is possible to make this come about, which inevitably will include that favorite word of divorcees, “alimony.”
All of this is ugly -- it hurts the children, it hurts both of you. Kids have nightmares over divorces and they cry all night because they must live without the security and love of the missing parent. School grades suffer and your children's feelings of self worth decline. Never, never trade the peace and tranquility of a happy home, or even a semi-happy home, for the evil of divorce. It causes untold grief to both marriage partners, but what it does to the children has been called inhumane.
If another woman, or another man, is involved there will probably not be enough money to sustain two households. Shun such a sad and wicked scenario if at all possible. You and your family deserve far better.
Don White is a former insurance company president, a writer for the Associated Press, and an editor for three magazines. He is publisher of 26 web sites including http://DonWhitePortfolio.blogspot.com
http://PoliticalDisconnect.blogspot.com
http://YankeeWizard.blogspot.com
http:DonWhiteChurchWire.blogspot.com
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Thanks, OpinionDuck. That was a very fine response to my article. You are extremely eloquent and well written. I really don't care if no one wants to read or comment on a particular Hub. Maybe they will on a future one. But I do agree with everything you said about divorce, especially that it is all slanted to the female party. That may be because she is usually the one who gets the kids, unless she is unable to care for them. Thanks again for your support and remarks. Don White
My pleasure Don
OpinionDuck says:
2 weeks ago
Hi Don,
this is a great hub, and I am surprised as popular as this subject is, that no one has commented on it.
The ironic thing about Divorce Law is that it is not fair and equitable even though was derived from the old Court of Equity. The amount of fairness and equity varies from State ot State and venue to venue.
Many of the divorce courts still treat men at a disadvantage, by applying the court's protection in favor of the women. This takes the euity of the Divorce Court and just handles it at the court's discretin. Not all judges are equal, and not all judges are fair, and not all judges apply the law.
Courts just don't know how to handle the children of a divorce. It does get complicated when both parents remarry to other people, and these people also have children from their broken marriage.
We think that because the statistics show that the divorce rate is going down, that the problems are not getting worse. There are too many children that are in broken homes but they are not in a family that is married, so divorce doesn't apply to them. The nimber of unmarried people that have children has increased since the 1970s and they are on the fringe of the law and or equity.
Courts and judges are not wise, they just make judgements.