Money and Power, Part 1

Typically, I write about the emotional landscape of divorce. Lots of writing on what it’s like to parent on your own and the struggles of having a high-conflict relationship with your coparent. But today I’m launching the piece I’ve written on money and divorce, and it’s so huge that I’m going to put it out in three parts (apologies to those of you who were hoping for a quick read) . Like all good things in society, money and power are wielded by people who are pretty much anything but divorced mothers. And women tend to fare far worse financially in divorce compared to men. There are reasons for this, ones that involve the judicial system and ones that depend on the relationship between the parents, their financial status, and their level of conflict. By the end of this piece, I hope to offer some strategies on how to navigate the financial difficulties that arise when you’re a single mother in a high-conflict divorce.

Spoiler alert, none of this is terribly uplifting. When you have an ex that refuses to pay any amount of money—whether it’s $30 or $3000—you are left to fend for yourself. Because the sad fact is, it’s more expensive and emotionally draining to fight for that money than it is to just buck up and pay for all that shit yourself. And you can imagine, since you’ve been reading my work or are yourself involved in a high-conflict divorce, the absurdity of the battles that are picked over any sum of money. That, and the research is abysmal.

When a woman decides she needs to leave her marriage, she will weigh two things in her mind: one, is whether she can emotionally handle living without her kids for half or more of their lives, and two, whether she can afford to live on her own. Plenty of mothers work but most of them earn less than their male counterparts, no matter what field they’re in. And a lot of mothers do not work, the “arrangement” being that women still, to this day, give up their careers so they can stay home and take care of the needs of the family. Don’t get me started on wages for mothers who stay at home to raise children (at least not yet), but this reason alone is a tremendous source of fear for women who want to end their marriage and can’t, even when the marriage is abusive. This decision alone is one of the biggest reasons this information needs to be out there. Imagine living with someone who is degrading, dehumanizing, addicted to something, or dangerous and you have to stay because you cannot pay for yourself and your kids to get away. Yes, there are services and yes, there are places women and children can go. But let’s face it, if you have a powerful husband who makes all the money and you’ve been unemployed for the past however many years and you want to leave, you’re entering into the lion’s den basically empty-handed. Most likely, you’ll get eaten alive.

Whether you’re thinking about leaving and need to get your financials in order, trying to craft your financial agreement for your divorce decree, or divorced and still fighting with your ex over money, I hope this piece helps you prepare for, engage wisely with, or gracefully let go of any financial argument you meet on your path.

So, with all that goodness in mind, we’ll start with the basics. Part One: The Facts and Stats.

In divorce, the financial agreements that couples draw up either in mediation or with attorneys are a way of helping each parent pay for and support the well-being, health, and happiness of their children. The discrepancies in the couples’ financial state paired with what it actually takes to raise children would seem to make this issue, if you give a shit about your kids at all, a no-brainer. Yet, there are some parents who refuse in both small and vast ways, to pay for things their children need. Also, some attorneys fuel this conflict—encouraging one parent to maintain their wealth or to ask for more than they need—so the battle fills their own pockets. Not all attorneys are like this, and if you divorce as individuals through a mediator, you’re more likely to reach an equitable distribution without a fight. But we’ve all heard the words of one disgruntled parent bad-mouthing their ex for their gold-digging tactics to get more money for themselves (and not their kids). Ok and yeah, maybe there are a small handful of people who actually do this, and they are assholes. But the rest of us are just trying to figure out how to pay for a house, a car, food, insurance, and all the other stuff it takes to live in society. So rather than the division of assets being about the support and well-being of everyone involved, it becomes about power.

For the sake of having a reference point, the statistics on divorce in this article refer to both custodial and non-custodial parents, and most of the available statistics are based largely if not exclusively on cis-gendered, heterosexual couples. The custodial parent is the person with whom the child is spending time. In most families, physical custody is shared, meaning parents split equally (or not) the time with the minor children. The financial agreements in these situations can vary greatly. One parent may pay the other spousal support (aka alimony), a lump sum or allowance paid over a period of time from the higher earning parent to the lower. They may also or exclusively pay child support, a mandatory payment made by a parent to cover the expenses of raising their children. They may also, with or without either child or spousal support, be sharing childcare expenses, splitting the costs of all expenses for the children—tuition, activities, medical care, even school supplies and new shoes—depending on the financial agreements in their court order. The details of these agreements are laid out in their divorce decree and, if violated, are sometimes but not always enforceable in court.

As of 2025, about 90% of divorced parents do not receive spousal support, and around 30% of custodial parents receive no child support. In essence, without an exact statistic, a significant portion of divorced custodial parents receive neither type of support. And, in 2022, when a parent fell behind or refused to pay anything beyond spousal or child support, it was reported that 44.2% of custodial parents received no extra support toward child-related expenses. No support toward medical bills, school expenses, childcare, or anything else if it fell outside of the court-ordered support amounts. Let it be known too, that when you waive your right to child or spousal support in your initial divorce decree, you are never allowed to ask for it again. So, if life happens and say, your coparent’s earnings increase and yours decrease, you are not ever allowed to go back to court and ask to start receiving child support. Even when support is initially waived for reasons like equal parenting time, near-similar incomes, or frankly, bullying from the other parent who threatens ongoing legal battles and financial ruin for the parent who asks for it, many custodial mothers report that co-parents refuse to reimburse agreed-upon expenses, even when they are required to do so by court order.

Here are those sad stats:

Nearly 20 million custodial parents receive support, but only about 55–60% of what is owed is actually collected.

There are roughly 11 million non-custodial fathers in the U.S., and about 7 million (about 64%) aren’t paying court-ordered child support.

About 30% of non‑custodial fathers owe back support, with nearly 30% behind over one year.

Around 60% of parents who owe do not pay continuously, and only 25–40% of those in arrears make any full or regular payments.

For reference, I am a parent who receives neither child support nor spousal support. My ex and I share joint physical custody and at the time of our divorce we were slated to make roughly the same income. We did put in our court order that we agree to share the cost of medical bills and health insurance for the kids, as well as any activities that affect both our parenting times. We did not put in our agreement that we would share any other costs for raising our kids. I invite you now think of the zillion other costs as a parent that you would wish you had someone else to split them with. Think about every pair of shoes you’ve bought for a sport, or registration for a weekend event that your kids participated in, or a special trip they went on with a bunch of friends, or school lunches and field trips, a psych eval you wanted but the other parent didn’t think your kid needs. Anything that fell on your time, or that you happened to be the one to think of your kids needing while your coparent didn’t, you pay for by yourself.

These costs, which fall outside the court-ordered support, are the ones that add up and end up being the source of many, many arguments between coparents. The opportunities I’ve had to ghostwrite as a divorce coach for high-conflict coparents have been eye-opening in this area. For example, a $500 plane ticket bought by one parent to get a kid to a sports tournament (which both parents support the child doing), now suddenly becomes a source of disagreement for the other parent who has decided they do not want to pay for half. When coparents refuse to pay their share of expenses, let’s all just agree to understand that legal enforcement is also weak or inaccessible for many parents because if you have to go to court to get paid for it, the cost of legal fees, documentation, and court hearings often outweigh the actual cost of the thing you’re fighting over. So, a single parent in a high-conflict divorce looking for reimbursement is faced with a choice that is difficult and at the same time painfully obvious. We can wreck our nervous systems fighting over it in emails and texts knowing full well we have no intention of taking any legal action, or we can just suck it up, not say shit about it, and pay for it ourselves.

If you’re just starting out on your divorce journey, let this also be a cautionary tale for those of you about to craft parenting agreements. While you may not want to drag your ex to court every time they refuse to pay for the cost of registering for the volleyball tournament and the gas, hotels, food, and special jersey they had to get for it, at least you’ll have agreed in advance that you’ll share those expenses. Sometimes, if you have a coparent who is willing to stand by their word, that agreement is enough. And if you’re like 44.2% of parents who don’t actually get any extra support toward expenses, or the 30% who receive no child support, or the 90% who receive no spousal support, then you already know that asking for money from your coparent might just be an exercise in futility every damn time.

And with that, I leave you to wait for Part 2, coming this month, where we’ll look at how women fare financially in divorce in general, abuse and post-divorce abuse, and what it means financially to parallel- (rather than co-) parent.