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Bad Economy Makes Breaking Up Harder

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The Associated Press

Published: November 29, 2008

Bonnie Rabin is fond of saying that divorce lawyers are a bit like liquor stores. They're busiest in the really good times, and the really bad.

These, of course, would be the bad times.

After all, "Money is THE great source of stress in relationships," said Rabin, one of five partners in a New York City matrimonial law firm, who speaks with the quiet authority of someone who's spent two decades speaking to troubled spouses. "You think it might be sex or the kids. But, no, it really comes down to money."

So it stands to reason that in such a dire time - when "virtually every day, I hear from a client who's lost their job," Rabin says - troubled relationships become more troubled. And once seemingly solid unions begin to fray.

But that doesn't mean everyone's rushing to divorce court. It just means every step of the process is more fraught, more complicated, more difficult. Breaking up in this economy, it seems, can be a lot harder to do.

So while some of Rabin's clients are taking the plunge, others are hesitating, figuring they'll ride out the worst of the economic storm, hoping their homes will regain value, their stock portfolios rise again, their 401(k)s recoup before the pie needs to be cut.

"These days, a lot of people can't afford to even maintain one home, let alone two homes with two mortgages or rents, cable, electricity, phone, two health insurance policies," said Rabin, 49.

And there's a whole other group that's taking up Rabin's time these days: Clients who are already divorced or separated and finding they simply can't live up to obligations they made in flusher times.

Said Rabin: "They're saying, 'I just can't pay for that private school anymore, that sleepaway camp, the piano lessons and the art classes. I know the judge ordered this, but I can't do it anymore.' And so we need to go back to court."

Whatever the status of a client - long divorced, just divorced or not yet - this is the season of facing up to cruel realities.

It's way too early to know the impact of the current financial crisis on divorce rates. Divorce has been on the decline in America for the past 25 years, after peaking in 1981. There's a common notion that one of two U.S. marriages end in divorce, but many experts say the real number is more likely 40 percent to 45 percent.

The divorce rate did drop sharply during the Great Depression - couples delayed marriages as well - but that wasn't necessarily a good thing, said Stephanie Coontz, who teaches history and family studies at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash.

"At the time, people wrote that a silver lining of the Depression was that marriages were being saved," Coontz said. "But domestic violence rates went up. When people are forced by economic pressures to stay in a marriage that has already gone south, that's not good for them or for their kids."

Anecdotal evidence seems to show that divorces may have slowed in recent months. Coontz said she's heard from some lawyers that they're seeing fewer divorce filings, and the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers got a similar result when it polled its members. In numbers released recently, 37 percent of the group's 1,600 members said they saw a decrease in divorce cases during national economic downturns. Forty-four percent said they saw no change, and 19 percent said they saw an increase.

"One thing we always see in a bad economy is fear," said the academy's president, Gary Nickelson, a lawyer in Fort Worth, Texas. "People may want out of their marriages - but they want to be OK, too."

And most divorces, he said, are not rash decisions made during fits of passion. "If you come home and catch your spouse in bed with someone - then, yeah, you might run and file for divorce," Nickelson said. "But that's not how most of these things occur. Most people take a long time to take action. So when the economy turns bad, the marriage may not be the best situation, but at least it's a known."

Nickelson, who has seen that phenomenon in his own practice, is not worried about his business; he said his firm could survive for months on work that's waiting to get done. "But are we seeing a lot of new people flooding our doors? No."

Back in New York's Manhattan, Rabin argues on behalf of a client in commercial real estate, whose business has plummeted some 75 percent this year.

Such arguments are quickly becoming a major part of Rabin's daily schedule. "We have cases where we've been negotiating agreements for months," she said. "And suddenly it's all changed. We have to renegotiate, in the midst of negotiations."
Rabin suspects that once the numbers do emerge, the financial crisis will not have lowered divorce rates.

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