Articles Posted in Separation

According to a recent New York Times article, more couples facing marital strife are now choosing to stay separated indefinitely rather than file for divorce. Many spouses who choose to live apart and carry on separate lives are still connected by the bonds of marriage: they file joint tax returns, carry joint insurance policies, and even occasionally visit one another. However, even long-estranged couples are bound by contractual issues like taxes, pensions, Social Security, and healthcare coverage.

target=”_blank”Charlotte divorce lawyers and marriage therapists report that the motivation for most couples to remain married is financial. Under federal law, an ex-spouse qualifies for a share of a spouse’s Social Security payment if the marriage lasts a decade. Occasionally, if a divorce is proceeding amicably, financial advisors and lawyers may urge a couple who have been married for nearly ten years to wait until the dependent spouse qualifies. For some couples, a separation agreement may be negotiated between the parties so that one spouse can keep the other’s insurance until he or she qualifies for Medicare. Thus, in the current economic recession, there is an incentive for couples to separate indefinitely: to avoid the real estate lows and the high care expense highs.

One family law attorney quoted by the New York Times reported that the biggest surprise to her was her clients’ primary consideration behind indefinite separation. She reports that the clients consider practical and financial, rather than familial, ramifications. The effect of these separations on the couple’s children rarely seems to be a priority. Furthermore, indefinite separations can leave a mess for survivors, as a spouse will still have legal rights to a predeceased spouse’s estate, even if separated.

Mental health experts recently reported that Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, or A.D.H.D., may be unknowingly taking a toll on many adult relationships. Studies suggested that at least 4 percent of adults now have A.D.H.D. and that as many as half of all children diagnosed with A.D.H.D. do not fully outgrow it and continue to struggle with the symptoms in adulthood. In a marriage, the common symptoms of the disorder, such as distraction, disorganization, and forgetfulness, can easily be misinterpreted as laziness, selfishness, and a lack of love and concern.

Adults with A.D.H.D. often learn coping skills to help them stay organized and focused at work, but continue to struggle at home, where they have a tendency to become distracted from household tasks. Some research suggests that adults with A.D.H.D. are twice as likely to be divorced, where another study found high levels of distress in 60 percent of marriages in which one spouse had A.D.H.D.

In these marriages, one spouse can be left with 100 percent of the family responsibility when the other spouse forgets to attend to certain tasks, leaving the responsible spouse frustrated and the spouse with the disorder confused by their partner’s anger. Long to-do lists or messy homes feel overwhelming to a brain with A.D.H.D., causing the spouse to retreat to a friendly distraction, such as a computer or video game. If the other spouse does not know that distraction is the issue, he or she may start to think that the spouse simply does not care about the problem at hand.

If both spouses have had previous marriages, they are 90 percent more likely to get divorced than if they are both in their first marriage, according to the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research. Although a great deal of data indicates that second marriages should be statistically more successful that first marriages, serial marriers (think Elizabeth Taylor) skew the statistics.

If only one partner in a marriage is a smoker, the couple is 75 to 91 percent more likely to divorce than married partners who are fellow smokers. According to a study conducted by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, the more similar people are in their values, backgrounds, and life goals, the more likely they are to have a successful marriage. Many dissimilarities between partners can increase their divorce risk, from age to ethnicity to unhealthy habits such as smoking.

If your parents are divorced, you are at least 40 percent more likely to get divorced than if they are still married. Moreover, if your parents remarried new spouses after divorcing, you are 91 percent more likely to get divorced. Divorce Magazinepublisher Dan Couvrette attributes these statistics to a certain mindset held by children of divorcees – being a witness to your parents’ divorce creates an ambivalence regarding commitment in today’s “disposable society.” Therefore, in the minds of children of divorcees, it is easier to divorce and start over in a new marriage than it is to fix the currently troubled marriage.

According to the National Marriage Project’s “State of Our Unions” Report for 2009, if you argue with your spouse about finances once per week, your marriage is 30 percent more likely to end in divorce than if you argue with your spouse about finances more infrequently. This report also found that couples with no assets at the beginning of a three-year period are 70 percent more likely to divorce by the end of the three-year period than couples who start with $10,000 in assets. This is because most divorce risk factors (such as age or education level) correlate with poverty.

According to the National Vital Statistics Report of 2003, if you live in a red state (Republican-leaning), you are 27 percent more likely to get divorced than those who reside in a blue state (Democrat-leaning). The theory behind this statistic is that red state couples tend to traditionally marry younger than blue state couples – and the younger the couple, the more at-risk the marriage is. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the states that perform the median youngest marriages are Utah, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma.