Articles Posted in Divorce / Dissolution of Marriage

If you are married to a dancer or choreographer, you may want to have the number of a good divorce lawyer handy. A new study that looks at divorce rates of certain occupations found that dancers have the highest divorce rate at 43.1 percent. If your main objective is to never get a divorce, consider marrying an engineer.

The study, conducted by Michael Aamodt, a professor at Radford University and consultant for DCI Consulting Group in Washington, D.C., was published in the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology. Aamodt started out to research the personalities of law enforcement officers, but found statistics on domestic lives by occupation hard to come by until he asked the Census Bureau to parse their data based on divorce and separation rates for 449 job categories.

The top three occupations with high divorce rates include the aforementioned dancers and choreographers, bartenders (38.4 percent) and massage therapists (38.2 percent). Also included in the top ten were casino workers, telephone operators, nurses and home health aides.

Aside from all the negative emotions, divorce is essentially a business transaction – a division of assets – unless, of course, children are involved. Then it is even more important to get the money part right.

Forewarned is forearmed. Here are some of the most common money mistakes made in divorce:

Taking an offer just to get it over. Since you will be making financial decisions that will determine your financial future, take the time to get it right. Consult with a financial professional so that you understand all the financial impacts of the settlement and do not always assume that an “equal” share is a fair share.

An article at the Huffington Post by Visa senior director Jason Alderman, who heads up that company’s financial literacy initiative, provides some good advice on dealing with the financial challenges of divorce.

With Florida’s current economy, the financial challenges of divorce are many, including dealing with unemployment, underwater mortgages, investment accounts that have lost value and affordable health insurance. He offers the following tips to help divorcing couples in Florida:

Seek out good advice. Getting a Florida divorce with a do-it-yourself kit is not a good idea, even if your assets are few. Hiring an attorney that specializes in divorce can help you avoid problems down the road. You should also consider speaking with a financial planner for advice on how to divide property and assets so you can both afford to set up separate households.

Few things can disrupt a carefully planned financial future like a divorce. So how do you prepare yourself financially for an impending divorce?

Prepare. Understanding the financial implications of divorce is the first step in becoming properly prepared. In most marriages, one spouse takes on the main responsibility for the couple’s finances. If you are the spouse who is not totally informed about your financial condition, get informed as quickly as possible. Get a full accounting of all your assets and expenses. Collect financial data about your bank accounts, retirement accounts, pension plans, IRAs, 401(k)’s, life insurance policies and other assets as well as your liabilities (credit card debt, mortgages, loans, etc.).

Manage your expectations. When one household becomes two, each spouse must take a realistic approach to financial planning. Chances are very good that you will not enjoy the same lifestyle you had when you were together. Make good financial decisions for you and your children – which may mean that you cannot afford to keep the family home.

Although it is still considered culturally taboo, one in four Japanese marriages end in divorce. To make it more palatable, the Japanese have devised a ritual that is growing in popularity as a symbolic way to end a marriage and find closure: the divorce ceremony.

As outlined at CNN.com, a Japanese divorce ceremony is similar to a wedding ceremony, but with a decidedly different outcome. It begins with the couple being pulled through the streets in separate rickshaws, with friends and family walking behind them. The ride ends at a “purposely shabby storefront” that has the words “Refresh” and “Divorce” written on the outside.

The couple and spouse enter, and a master of the ceremony gives a short speech about how the couple has grown apart and decided to end their marriage. He invites everyone to say farewell. Then the couple smashes the soon-to-be ex-wife’s wedding ring with a hammer painted green like a frog (which in Japanese culture symbolizes change). A short reception follows, with the couple sitting back-to-back at separate tables. Party favors are chopsticks – because it is two things you can pull apart easily. After the ceremony, the couple bows to each other politely and departs to live their separate lives.

Ever since an economic study in 2003 revealed that couples with a daughter are five percent more likely to divorce – and that the risk for divorce goes up with each additional daughter – psychologists have been trying to explain the reason for the phenomenon. Now, one expert says the question being asked has been the wrong one.

According to University of Notre Dame psychology professor Anita E. Kelly, the question is not why men stay in marriages with sons, which has been the way many researchers have approached the “why” behind the statistic. It’s why do women with daughters leave marriages more than women with sons?

After all, Kelly says, divorce statistics show that in 73 percent of failed marriages, it is the wife who leaves the husband. She also said studies have shown that adult sons add more to the daily workload of their parents, while adult daughters lessen the workload.

A new study published in the October issue of the Journal of Family Issues says that when women are the breadwinners in their family, they are almost 40 percent more likely to get a divorce than lower income women.

Researchers at Western Washington University studied 2,500 women who were married between 1979 and 2002 and found that the divorce “tipping point” came when the wife provided at least 60 percent of the household income. WWU sociologist Jay Teachman said that it did not matter whether the couple was rich or poor – it just mattered who earned the most money.

He said that the generation of women studied entered marriage with certain economic expectations and expected the man to be the primary breadwinner. When that did not happen, the marriage became strained. He said that successful women with higher incomes might also resent a husband who does not “pull his weight” – and that extra hours at the office for women also translates into a higher level of stress.

The newlywed husband of a Westchester, N.Y. woman who lied about having leukemia to get a free wedding dress and honeymoon has filed for divorce.

Michael O’Connell told the New York Daily News that he is “disgusted and outraged” to discover that his bride, Jessica Vega, lied about having terminal cancer in order to evoke sympathy, not only from him but also from virtual strangers who gave the couple a free wedding and honeymoon, wedding rings and other merchandise and services when a story about them appeared in a local newspaper.

O’Connell said that Vega produced a “phony” letter from a cancer specialist confirming her diagnosis, although when he called the clinic where the letter came from, they told him she had never been a patient there. He also admitted to “slapping the fire” out of his estranged wife when he learned that her leukemia diagnosis was a lie.

“Gray divorce” – the new term given to divorces that occur after 20 or more years of marriage – is on the rise in the U.S. and Baby Boomers are leading the way, according to a recent article in the Sacramento Bee.

The divorce rate among those born between 1946 and 1964 is triple that of their parents, and most relationship experts agree that the main reason is because of Boomers’ spirit of independence and “make my own way in the world” viewpoint.

Experts also say that divorce is part of the Boomers’ “value system,” having grown up as divorce lost its social stigma and became more prevalent in American society. Boomers, who have always taken the “pursuit of happiness” proviso to an extreme, are finding that once the kids are gone, there is not much tying them to their spouse anymore because interests have diverged.

A new study of relationships has found that if a woman earns more money than a man, both will be more likely to cheat.

Cornell graduate student Christin Munsch studied the results of a national survey, tracking 9,000 people between the ages of 17 and 27. She found that men who make less than their female partners or wives feel a “gender identity threat” that made them more likely to cheat because of feelings of being powerless.

Women who make more than their male partner are also more likely to cheat, the study suggests, because having a higher income may make them feel they have more power to do what they want.