The Grey Divorce

{2:36 minutes to read} While the rate of divorce for the general population was relatively flat between 1990 and 2010, the divorce rate for couples age 50 and over doubled during that span. As a group, those over 50 accounted for about 25% of all divorces in 2010 according to a study by the National Center for Family & Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University in Ohio.

Why is this so? Part of the reason is that older couples often have more financial resources to fall back on. Another reason is that there are more women in the workforce who have their own retirement accounts and salary which makes them less dependent on their spouses for support.

Even those who do not have their own retirement accounts or pensions are usually entitled, by state law, to share in the accounts owned by their spouses. And since these accounts can be divided without tax or penalty, each person can leave the marriage with at least some form of retirement account.

A final factor is Social Security. If a marriage has lasted at least 10 years, the non-working spouse is entitled to receive 50% of his or her spouse’s Social Security benefit, unless he or she can obtain a greater benefit based upon his or her own work record.

While obtaining a divorce at any age is likely to mean a reduction in your standard of living, at least those couples who do not have to deal with minor children or child support have less to decide; for most, it is simply how to divide the assets and liabilities that were acquired during the marriage and how each spouse can support him or herself after they separate.

As I have said many times before in these posts, a competent mediator and/or financial planner is better suited to help a couple with these decisions than engaging in the services of two lawyers and creating an adversarial event that reduces the amount of resources available for distribution between the spouses!

And as an added bonus, maintaining a civil relationship with your ex will allow the two of you to continue to share holidays and other important events involving your children and grandchildren.