Tag Archives: divorce

Financial Vulnerability in Marriage

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It’s counterintuitive to think about divorce when you marry. Few women do. Without thinking of the consequences of letting our husband manage our money, we set ourselves up for financial vulnerability. We trust him to be making financial choices that will benefit us both.

Sometimes he does.  Sometimes he doesn’t.  Most of the time, he’s not thinking of his future without us.

Money is never about money. It’s about what we fear and what we want, what we learned from our family, and how comfortable we feel discussing a touchy subject with our mate. It’s about power and leverage – who has it, how is it used, who is affected by it. It’s about the working dynamics of a relationship. A marriage can’t function without  the ability to talk about money.

Unfortunately, if we’re not participating in the marital finances, we don’t find out how vulnerable we are until a crisis of widowhood or divorce changes our life.  Not being able to talk about money comfortably, either before or during marriage, makes women financially vulnerable and resentful.

Here are six questions to answer for yourself before you’re slammed with a crisis:

Am I participating in financial decisions with my husband?

Do I understand our marital finances?

What do I need financially to feel secure?

How would I manage if I were widowed or divorced?

Do I sign documents without understanding them?

Do I know the location of all our financial records?

There are many more questions and answers in my book. The information can help make you financially intimate and feeling safe.

http://www.amazon.com/Worry-about-Thing-Financial-Intimacy/dp/0977836827/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1406390916&sr=8-2&keywords=don%27t+worry+about+a+thing+dear

The Tyranny of Money

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It happened again, but you won’t find it online or in the newspaper. The wealthy banker saw to that. The police knew the couple. A number of domestic violence calls, two trips to the emergency room for broken ribs. No news coverage, all hush hush.

This time, the police found her in her gray Lexus in a no parking zone at sunrise. Slumped inside a mink coat, her head tipped against the window, jaw slack, mouth open. Her diamond necklace and rings sparkled in the morning light.

One of the officers knocked on the window; she didn’t respond. They pried the door open on the passenger side. The car smelled from alcohol. They recognized her as one of the top fundraisers for the annual community event benefiting the police and fire departments.

An ambulance raced her to hospital emergency where doctors tried to wake her. A blood sample determined that she taken sleeping pills with vodka. They pumped her stomach and checked her in for further tests. It didn’t look like an accident.

When they reached her husband, in Paris for a banking conference, he was furious. “No, he couldn’t return that day, he had an important meeting. He’d call the kids. They’d handle it.” Thousands of dollars on a shrink, he thought,  and she was still pulling this kind of stunt.

“No, nothing was any different now,” he said in response to their question. Oh, one thing – he’d filed for divorce earlier in the week.

Could the police keep the car incident out of the papers?” he asked. “Maybe they could, but the divorce filing is public information,” they answered. “We can’t do anything about that.”

He slammed the phone down. “Bitch – the damn woman was always messing things up for him.”

 

 

Divorce as Opening to Friendship

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Divorce doesn’t have to be a battleground. What we need is a different frame of reference.

When my first husband and I divorced after 18 years, we realized we were two perfectly fine individuals who just couldn’t make it together. He was a good man; I was a good woman. We grew apart over the years and no longer shared the same values, interests or desires.

No one was to blame. We didn’t have to cast each other in the role of villain. Neither of us was victimized. We shared responsibility for not trying harder to keep our marriage intact. Our children endured the pain of divorce. At the time, neither of us knew how to ease that.

A few years after our divorce, my ex met a woman who is perfect for him. They are still married after 25 years. She was wonderful to our girls, and to me. I liked her and included her in family events.  My second husband liked that we all got along. His ex-wife didn’t think that was all right, so she wasn’t part of our life.

My ex and his wife are still an integral part of our small family. I love them both. It took a while for their friends to understand how exes could remain so close. On the other hand, I don’t understand how people who divorce spend years vilifying and blaming their ex, especially to their children.

When a marriage doesn’t work out, it’s easier to blame than to accept responsibility. Imperfect people with unmet needs marry each other and expect that their mate will make them happy. That’s the subtext in the fine print. I used to believe that too. So maybe the question to ask after divorce is “How did I grow from this experience and what have I learned about myself?”

That’s why the growing trend towards collaborative divorce is so encouraging. http://www.collaborative-law.com/

Divorce can be the beginning of friendship. Don’t treat it as the end.

 

 

 

http://www.collaborative-law.com/

Widowhood and Divorce Biggest Stressors

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You may have suspected it. The SRRS confirms it.
Stress correlates directly and measurably with the chance of getting sick. 

Developed by Dr. Thomas Holmes at the University of Washington State Medical School, the Social Readjustment Rating Scale (SRRS) assigns rankings to life changing events. Death of a spouse and divorce rank at the top of the list.

Combined with the other factors on the chart that are natural companions to widowhood, the combined score of a widow catapults off the charts.

Divorce typically doesn’t happen without warning.  Not so for widowhood. Within the space of a heartbeat, you can be widowed. A plane or car crash. A fall from a ladder. A boating or skiing accident. A heart attack. Your world turns upside down. Your social status changes; your family pressures increase. Financial pressures can push your nervous system beyond your ability to cope.

For the first time in your life, you may now be faced with financial decisions. Your husband may have wanted you to be involved in the marital finances, but you let him do it, saying you were too busy or not interested.

Perhaps you were married to an optimist who refused to face his mortality, who told you not to worry, that nothing would happen to him. You may have been worried sick (metaphors do apply here) about how you would cope on your own if something happened to your husband, but you never took any action to make sure you had the financial information you now need.

In short, you may be totally unaware of what you’re facing as you now have to manage things on your own.
Ultimately, the only thing you can control is to plan for the things you can’t control.  If you’re not familiar with the finances in your family, not just the household budget, but all the marital finances, get involved.

If I were your husband, and I loved you, I’d nag you to participate and understand the finances. After all the hard work we did, I’d hate to see you blow it all after I’m gone.