Baby boomers court divorce

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We boomers often pause to reflect about what was, is and might be. Rumination prompts many boomers to ultimately decide “It’s just not working.” No time like the present, they feel, for change. After all, being with someone who makes you miserable is not only a waste of precious time, but the chronic stress can seriously impact your health and wellbeing.

When your marriage “number’s up”

  • Last year, Pew Research Center released research that found 39 percent of all of us thought marriage was becoming obsolete, up from 28 percent from those who felt that way in the 1970s. Do we have preservation reservations about marriage?
  • Almost 35 percent of us boomers are divorced and our generation comprises the majority of all divorced people in  America.
  • The National Center for Family & Marriage Research at Bowling Green State University says that even though America’s overall divorce rate has fallen in the past two decades, our boomer divorce rate—people over age 50—has doubled.

    More than one-third of baby boomers are divorced.

 

Less destructive divorces

Earlier this year, divorce expert Karen Stewart told Fox Business News that “Baby boomers tend to be the group that has the economic livelihood and the economic feasibility to get divorced…Marriages with not a lot of money tend to be more financially strained which can lead to stress and increase the risk of divorce. The baby boomer generation is hit most by those extremes…Kids getting older and leaving the nest is another main driver of increasing divorce.”

She optimistically projects that as we boomers age, our boomer divorce trend will ease up and we’ll try to end marriages in a “less destructive way.” Hiring two lawyers to battle it out has huge costs—financially and emotionally.

Cut and run?

Why we divorce is most often a failure to communicate. Another decisive factor, according to Albuquerque, N. M. divorce attorneys Collins & Collins, P. C., is when either spouse experiences a major health scare or disability.

  •  The ill person may:
  1. face his or her mortality, creating an immediate need to change a bad situation
  2. want to make the most of time left
  3. become totally intolerant of things that were bearable previously
  4. change views and perspectives
  •  The partner may:
  1. not be willing or adept to be a caregiver
  2. want to get on with life, unencumbered
  •  The couple may
  1. be unable to handle enormous medical expenses without impoverishing the healthy spouse

Would you run when something happened to your spouse? This puts a different spin on “for better or for worse.”

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(Photo courtesy: © Chrisharvey | Dreamstime.com)

 

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