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Your marriage is on the rocks. The moments of positive time together are dwarfed by the hours of negative interaction. You’ve gone the couples therapy route to no avail and want to divorce. You check your finances and find, as the song goes, that breaking up is hard to do. The process—the legal fees and the costs of two residences—are beyond your means. What to do?
Beginnings
First, determine if money is really the issue. Divorce is a frightening life change and fear wears many masks. Here are some common underlying issues that may keep a couple deadlocked:
1. The one who would like to initiate a divorce feels that doing so would be an admission that he or she is wrong and that the other is right after all. As one woman put it, “I’d leave the philandering bastard in a flash, but I’ll be damned if I am going to give him the opportunity to come out of this thing a wounded hero!”
2. Each partner may want the other to assume the responsibility and guilt for the breakup. Neither may want to play “bad guy” or “home wrecker” in front of the children, so they stick together in order not to let the other have this advantage.
3. One or both may be excessively afraid of loneliness. Most people abhor loneliness, some are terrorized to the point where being left alone makes them feel like an abandoned orphan.
Is It Really About Finances?
To determine whether money is really the issue, take an asset/expense and cash-flow snapshot. Have your accountant review the numbers, talk to friends who have been divorced and consult with one or two matrimonial attorneys. Get an estimate of costs, legal, housing and miscellaneous—like separate health insurance—as well as what is likely to be the asset division between you and your spouse. If you find that the numbers work although your lifestyle would need to be scaled back, it is likely that money is a factor, but possibly not the key issue. In that instance, it would be wise to consider a trial separation. An increasingly common approach is to rent an apartment and rotate with your estranged partner, for example, one week in the apartment and one week in the house.
Facing the Reality
What if money is the main issue and the bills are barely covered as it is? For middle-income families, the expense of two households (not to mention legal fees) presents a formidable barrier to divorce. More and more couples are falling into this category, especially in trying economic times.
What remedy is there for the financially stretched couple whose marriage has failed? Some couples carry on an emotional war that leaves them and their children as casualties. Other couples react to their emotional divorce by establishing a pseudo-relationship, wherein the satisfaction derived from outside activities masks the emptiness within.
Still others choose to live together separately and, to the best of their ability, peacefully, the best of grim choices. Here are some suggestions for making it work:
Coming to Terms
1. Explain to the children that you have decided to sleep apart and live apart (together) in the house. The essence of your statement goes something like this, “We have given our best effort to making this marriage work and we have not been successful. We have decided to stay together but to live as independently of each other as possible. Nothing we do will change your life or our love and caring for you…” This is a difficult challenge and can be confusing, but children need certainty and are better off knowing what’s happening than wondering about it and drawing their own (perhaps frightening) conclusions.
2. Create rules of independence. For example, if there is to be dating, dates should not come to the house, nor should they be introduced to the children. In addition, neither parent is obligated to report his or her whereabouts or time schedule to the other when it does not involve parental responsibilities. Along these lines, block out times for separate vacations. If they are to be without the children, plan for coverage accordingly.
3. Make a list of the household chores and divide them up equitably so that squabbles about who does what are minimized or better yet, eliminated. Topping that list should be a division of responsibility for child care, who is in charge of whom and when must be carefully defined.
4. Since you are living separate lives together privacy is likely to be a challenge. The cost of separate phone lines with password-protected voicemail is worth the expense. Password-protected e-mail accounts are also suggested.
5. To serve the best interests of the children (and each other) a code of behavior should be established. For example, chronic arguing in front of the children is harmful and so is speaking negatively about the other parent. An agreement defining acceptable behavior needs to be drawn up in writing and signed by both partners. For example, “Rather than airing grievances in front of the children, they will be aired privately every Tuesday evening.”
6. How are the household expenses to be covered? This is another challenge and may require a third party to mediate. Since income and expenses are fluid, whatever results from this discussion should not be viewed as “forever” but as a solution that is renegotiated after one year.
7. When both partners have settled into an in-house separation—for example after a year—consider consulting with an attorney who specializes in family mediation and create an agreement that formally defines financial and parental obligations. This may be called a “mid-nuptial” agreement and will serve as the basis of a divorce agreement if both parties agree. While this may be an arduous task, the completion typically clarifies and guides the living-together-separately arrangement and also leaves couples feeling more secure and certain about their future if they decide to formally divorce.
Revisiting the Decision
Lastly, living together separately is a challenge, at best. The financial hardship of an actual divorce should be periodically weighed against a living arrangement that may slowly eat away at integrity and well-being; it is not a recommended long-term solution.
