According to the AP, more and more couples are staying together because they can’t afford to set up separate households:
With the recession and the collapse of the housing market, more and more couples who have broken up are continuing to live under the same roof, according to judges and divorce lawyers. Some are waiting for housing prices to rebound; some are trying to get back on their feet financially.
The phenomenon is being felt around the country but most keenly in areas hit harder by foreclosure, such as the Sun Belt. […]
Sometimes the financial implications of a divorce are so grim that a couple whose marriage is on the rocks decide to give it another try.
Kent Peterson, a longtime divorce mediator in Wayzata, Minn., said a young couple from the Minneapolis area were moving toward separation until they got a look at all the costs involved in divorce.
Seems right to me. If marriage is primarily a financial agreement between individuals (in exchange for agreeing to share assets and financial risk, the married couple enjoys tax breaks, new financial rights, and wedding presents), why shouldn’t divorce be as well?
On the “tax breaks”… it’s actually pretty complicated what happens to your taxes when you get married (shocking for the US tax code, I know). You could either get a penalty or a bonus, depending on how much you make, how close or far apart your incomes are, etc. The marriage penalty was mitigated a few years ago, but that doesn’t mean that you now automatically get a tax break when you get married.
Hmmm… but the US economy was arguably in worse shape in 1981, just when US divorce rates were at their all time high, with fewer women in the workplace. Is this generation of failed relationships decidedly wimpier than their parents?
This sounds familiar and I’m not even married.
Staying in the same house after divorce is the new “living in your mom’s basement” after college.
Julie @ 1 is right on. For an upper-middle-class dual-income couple (e.g. both have good jobs and fall into the 25% tax bracket), marriage brings no insurance benefit and a significant tax penalty. And yet my upper-middle-class friends still marry. So there must be some romantic aspect.
Maybe these couples’ dire financial straits are part of the reason they’re having marital troubles in the first place.
true @ 6.
this sitch reminds me of that movie–vince vaughn and jenn aniston–forgot what’s it called. (not that i’ve ever seen it in full.)
I’ve often thought about how, as a man who lives alone, I would save so much money if I just asked my girlfriend to move in with me.
We’re talking thousands and thousands of dollars a year I could be putting into savings for a house or a car or something if I shared my living space.
But that thought doesn’t take into account whether it would be right for our relationship at all.
So I can easily believe this story.
#7 It’s called “The Break Up.” USA just showed it about a hundred times a couple weekends ago.
I think if you can stand to live together you might as well be housemates instead of roommates.
Only stick around for as long as it takes for the other person(after the divorce) to REALLY get on your nerves, then beg your family or friends to let you move in with them. That’s what I did. It wasn’t worth living with an idiot just to try to save money.
“If marriage is primarily a financial agreement between individuals”
Eww. That’s an even lamer definition of marriage than the Mormons’.
It seems to me the opposite could also be true. My parents are divorce attorneys and they say business is really busy right now. People are seeing that their marital assets are shot anyway, so no point in staying together for the money.