The Real Cost Of Divorce By James Wallis At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Marriage is an institution that has many facets. It affects your life on many different planes – emotional, social, personal and legal. The same is true of divorce. Marital separation has deep psychological consequences. There are financial consequences too because of division of assets and finances, as well as the litigation expenses involved. Your relationship with other people changes, such as your in-laws and the partner’s friends. Truly, divorce has as weighty implications for your life as well as marriage.

Emotional Cost

Divorce extracts a heavy emotional cost from the partners. When you get married, you have many dreams and aspirations that you want fulfilled in the next few years. You invest a lot of time, money, effort and emotions into making your marriage successful and create a cosy family home of your own. Divorce is the death-knell of everything that you wanted to achieve from your marriage.

This is why it creates immense emotional turmoil, with the partners blaming themselves or the other for the debacle. Marital separation creates negative feelings such as anger, grief, revenge, hurt and guilt. Many people are unable to come out of the emotional black hole and their life takes a turn for the worse. Quite a few shy away from marriage for ever, instead preferring only live-in relationships.

Litigation Expenses

Marriage is a legally enforceable contract that gives certain rights to the partners and imposes many obligations. There is a proper legal procedure to dissolve it. To separate, the partners first have to settle crucial issues such as division of assets and liabilities, with whom will the kids stay after divorce and how much maintenance will be paid to the wife.

These are all very weighty issues for the partners. The family assets are bought with one’s hard-earned money and the partners are loathe to give them away to the other. The issue of child custody raises the temperature even more as partners are greatly attached to their kids and fight tooth and nail for the right to live with them. These disputes necessitate the hiring of a solicitor by both the partners. Legal fees can burn a big hole in the pocket of the contesting spouses.

Division of Assets and Finances

When people get married, their incomes merge. They bring assets into the marriage and also buy new ones, such as house, car and white goods. As long as the partners remain married, nobody is bothered about who is spending what from whose money. However, once divorce papers are filed, all the family assets have to be divided among the partners.

The wives usually gain in this while the husband feels unfair treatment has been meted out to him because he was earning all through. The wife though argues that by being a full-time home-maker, she sacrificed her career and should be compensated accordingly. The division of assets and income leaves both the partners disadvantaged.

Effect on Children

The children are considered by psychologists as the real victims of divorce due to the emotional suffering and trauma that is inflicted on their minds. They undergo stress and anxiety as they watch their family home disintegrate before their eyes. They also develop a guilt complex and think that their parents are leaving them because they couldn’t rise up to their expectations.

Such children of divorce begin to under-perform in school and develop a lack of confidence. Their personality suffers. They often lose trust in human relationships and when they grow up, they themselves are unable to enter into stable relationship with others. That is why it is often said that divorce runs in the family and people who saw their parents divorce are more likely to file for marital separation themselves.

Changes in Lifestyle
Divorce triggers many abrupt changes in lifestyle and social situation of the partners. The divorced individual regains his or her personal freedom. You can enter into new relationships, spend your money any way you want, come home any time, travel anywhere, move to any part of the country and generally live a free-wheeling existence, not accountable to anybody. Divorce can give a real sense of empowerment or it can create massive insecurity and depression, depending on the temperament of the individual.

Relationships with Other People

Divorce changes your relationship with not only your spouse but also with his or her relatives. Your in-laws with whom you got along so well during marriage now become almost strangers and you feel uncomfortable interacting with them. Your ex-partner’s friends too do not show as much warmth as they used to show earlier. Worse, the children do not get to see their grandparents anymore. Consequently, your social circle shrinks to your own immediate friends and relatives.

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