Not less than $150,000. With lost income,
it would easily approach $400,000 upwards of $100,000
easily. Between
$172,799 to roughly $191,000, of which I still owe 120,929.
Getting divorced in the US isn't cheap. In 2021, there were
roughly 2 million marriages and nearly 700,000 divorces. That's
a lot of people coughing up a lot of dough.
It's been four years of misery and very expensive four years of
misery. While
divorces are expensive, how expensive depends on where you
live. If you have children, if you own property, if there's
anything you and your spouse disagree on, and several other
factors.
The more complex it is, the more hours that are required hours by
the lawyers, hours by the appraisers, the business
valuators, the crypto hunters, the forensics, the forensic
accountants, the forensic psychologist. According
to Elizabeth Douglas, founding attorney and CEO of Douglas
Family Law Group in New York, an uncontested divorce costs
between $1500 and $5500 pn average and a contested divorce
anywhere from $40,000 to $140,000. If the case goes to
trial, even more.
This is Lindsay Williams, John Norman and Zoe Hutzler. Three
people who have gone through at least one divorce. They cost
various amounts but for all significantly affected their
financial circumstances. Let's start with Lindsay who got
divorced twice. Both were uncontested with no children
involved. An uncontested divorce is what it sounds like:
uncontested and it's typically a lot cheaper. A contested divorce
is when the couple can't come to an agreement. Lindsay went the
cheapest route possible, DIY.
You should pay someone to help you get divorced. You don't have
to do it a couple of times. But there are also certain counties
that have Do It Yourself programs where you can go online
and you can fill out the forms yourself. Lindsay's first
divorce in 1997 cost $1,000. Their second in 2006 was $4,000.
But after Lindsay's first husband passed, they had to pay
their ex husband's debt. Did you consult a lawyer to make sure
that was legally solid?
I didn't because I was poor. I grew up poor and the idea of
consulting a lawyer for anything was so outside of my financial,
you know, scope of understanding. No matter what
contested or not, fees can't be escaped. Court fees differ by
state but in New York, even for an uncontested divorce, filing
fees will cost you at least $335. That's not including the
cost of a lawyer, photocopies, notary fees, transportation,
mailing and processor fees, among others.
There are software you have to buy if you want to use things to
support your case like text messages and emails, I paid a
transcriber $250 for a court transcription. That gets
expensive. Then
there are contested divorces, which means more conflict and
more conflict means more money. Court
filing fees, process servers or Real Property Appraiser.
Typically there is a forensic psychologist who has a custody
issue, business valuator nowadays, so many people have
cryptocurrency so a crypto hunter a tax specialist. Douglas
says one of the most expensive parts of a contested divorce is
discovery, the formal process of exchanging information between
the parties - that can take months and even years.
Most prices get driven up when we're dealing with people who
have offshore accounts, or they're trying to hide assets or
transfers. That's where you start seeing things like
funneling money into an aunt's name a sister's name.
The more topics that need to be discussed, assets split, money
trying to maintain essentially two households, on our same
found, children that need to be planned for, all means more
hours, you're paying your lawyer for. Since John first separated
from his ex wife in 2019 he's used several ranging from $250
to $650 an hour. A divorce is a separation, a dissolution a
disassociation. And with that comes a lot of life changes -
significant ones. We're
incomes,
two houses, two electricity bills, cable, internet,
groceries, cars, rent or mortgage. And that's if you're
lucky, Lindsay was in an abusive relationship.
It was not safe to stay in the house, but I didn't have
anywhere to go. So that's when I learned how to live in a car.
There's also the cost of moving, buying new furniture, setting up
utilities, doing your taxes independently, separating your
health insurance and possibly selling the shared home or
homes. And that's just the beginning. This major life
change might cause time lost at work, the need for therapy, and
if there are children involved, more child care. And speaking of
children, there's custody to figure out. John worked in law
enforcement for more than 20 years and he was retired in
2019. When he separated from his ex wife,
we went through a completely unnecessary custody battle. It
was about $123,000 in attorneys fees, I had to hire an expert
witness. I was without my kids for a year.
Before the divorce, he says money wasn't a concern. Now, he
owes more than $120,000, nearly $40,000 of that in credit card
debt.
We had extra money and bought a boat then there was this custody
battle and it just drained all my accounts. It's gonna take me
years to recoup from that.
He says he retired in 2016, and became the primary caretaker to
his then seven and 10 year old daughters. That's while his ex
wife started her own business. So when he and his ex wife
split, all he had coming in was a pension - $3,200 a month
I was paying for groceries on our joint checking account, then
that joint checking account was emptied to an account that my
name wasn't on. So I was left with $38. And it was a difficult
spot to be in.
He worked in real estate, got a part time job at Ithaca College,
and he recently accepted a new job with Tennessee Homeland
Security as a special field agent. How are you gonna get out
of all this debt?
Working a lot, you know, living a more frugal lifestyle, I'm
gonna devote probably the vast majority of my pension to paying
down debt. I'm working with a financial analyst as well, who
is helping with that, and that's yes, by the way, that's another
expense, another $5,000 to come into a plan on how to pay down
your debt, but it's a drop in the bucket if I can effectively
erase $120,000 of debt in the next three to four years. It's
gonna be money well spent.
Ken couch is a professor at the University of Connecticut
studying the economic effects of unexpected lifecycle events. In
a long term study developed in collaboration with the Social
Security Administration, he found that divorced women lost
significant financial security unless they remarried. The
flows of child support and alimony do not make up for the
additional living costs on average. In the divorced woman's
household typically, the household of the woman and
children suffer a significant decline in their standard of
living where the typical male even after paying the child
support is doing a little bit better than he was married. He's
not the only one to discuss what many around the world call the
divorce gap. This study for one on British households by a
professor at the London School of Economics claims fathers see
an income boost of about 25% After getting divorced on
average, while mothers experience a 20% drop. It's
important to remember that women earn 82 cents for every dollar a
man earns. However, something that we all know has changed in
recent decades is who makes more money. It's much more common now
for women to be the breadwinner. And of course, not all divorces
involve a man and a woman. Well, studies do show that in the long
term, women end up with a decline in their standard of
living higher earners do experience substantial financial
loss, at least during the divorce. If you're
the monied spouse, you're probably going to pay more
because you're contributing a portion towards the other
spouse's council fees. Likely you are trying to maintain the
status quo. So you're probably paying child support, you're
probably paying maintenance all while trying to maintain a home
or a new lifestyle of your own.
So how can Americans reduce their costs?
Fight less, agree more. Take the emotion to the extent you can
out of it. Even when you have lots of assets to protect when
you are fighting about everything where everything has
to be your way or the highway, it's going to cost you more.
To prevent her divorce from being a huge financial burden on
both her and her ex husband, Zoe Hutzler, who has a seven year
old son worked with a friend of hers who was an attorney to
craft a custody agreement.
We didn't have a humongous estate, the tough part for us
was custody. I thought that would really reduce the amount
of time we would spend with our lawyers. Unfortunately, my ex
husband didn't think so. Like John's,
Zoe's divorce started with mediation, but they were going
nowhere and got lawyers in 2022. She says one argument alone
about picking up and dropping off her son cost her $4,000. I
mean, I literally would text him on the side and say, Do you
realize how much this fight is costing us? This is ridiculous.
Can't we be adults can't we just have this conversation? But when
somebody else engages their lawyer, you have no choice but
then to engage back with your lawyer.
The money I've spent on things that have vaporized and never
come to fruition. We spent three weeks in negotiations, spending
money on our attorneys to negotiate the duration of
gymnastics and how it would unfold and who would be taking
and then the kid doesn't want to do gymnastics.
While it might be easier said than done, there are steps
Americans can take to keep costs down. Get yourself organized.
Gather all the documents you might need like tax returns,
employment contracts and real estate documents. Know your
state laws and especially know your rights. The more work you
do up front, the less time you'll be paying someone else to
do it for you, and choose your mediator or lawyer wisely.
You get what you pay for. The cheapest, cheapest, cheapest way
is do it yourself or, you know, you see those signs all the
time, a divorce $399. It's like getting a happy meal right as
opposed to the real deal. But if you do that, then you have to be
prepared to deal with those results, which might be waiting
longer, getting papers bounced back and getting it done wrong. At
the same time. Spend your time with your lawyer wisely. Your
divorce lawyer should not be your best friend, also the most
expensive friend you can have. Keep
the explaining complaining and venting for your trusted loved
ones. And not someone with a several hundred dollar hourly
rate. A therapist might be a good idea too, and certainly a
cheaper one. There are also options for those who don't have
enough money to get divorced - law firms that do pro bono work,
offer financial assistance, and there are many organizations,
nonprofits and shelters
that can help too. You don't have to stay married to someone
just because you don't have the money. And finally, for
those who aren't in this situation quite yet, consider a
prenup. The best
piece of advice I can give anybody is you are never going
to negotiate a more favorable divorce for both parties than
when you love each other.
Prenups are romantic. You get to protect someone while you still
love them before you hate them. And you get to divide and save
money for both of you early on. I think there's some people who
stay married because they're afraid that their lifestyle
won't be able to be maintained. Or they still believe that old
adage it's cheaper to keep her. I say no it's not. It's not
cheaper because you can't get that cost back