Money and Power, Part 2
Welcome back to Part 2 of my series on money and power in divorce. If you haven’t read Part 1, you can do that HERE, but in the mean-time, as promised, we’ll continue our discussion about how women fare financially in divorce, the financial impacts of post-divorce abuse, and the sometimes difficult but always powerful parallel parenting.
In Part 1 we went over the basics—what financial arrangements look like and mean in a divorce, and how (and whether) women get paid for support and reimbursed for expenses by their ex-spouses. Another part of why women fare worse than men in divorce is that, in the U.S, we experience significantly sharper drops in household income post‑divorce than men. Studies show women’s income falls by anywhere from 33%-41%, versus an 18%-21% decline for men in the first year of being divorced. Women’s standard of living drops as well, again almost double that of men’s. The reasons for this stem from the same societal issues that have plagued women throughout history:
- The gender pay gap where women earn on average around 82-83 cents per dollar compared to their male counterparts
- The fact that married women are more likely to interrupt careers for caregiving or child-rearing, reducing long-term income and retirement savings
- And that even when wealth losses are similar between male and female spouses, fewer women re-partner, and those who do tend to recover more of their living standards than those who remain single
In a high-conflict divorce, a woman may accept a less-than-ideal settlement just to avoid a fight. Especially if their spouse managed the money of the household, a lot of women are afraid to push for their share and would rather just get out and move on. But women statistically and consistently bear heavier financial burdens post-divorce, in part because of those steeper and more sustained declines in both income and standard of living, and high-conflict makes that a more likely possibility.
Anecdotally, in my N of 1, every divorced woman I know has something shitty to say about their ex and money. And the more conflict they have with their ex the worse it is. Many women simply accept their fate and just take care of their kids’ needs largely on their own without going to court over money they’re owed. There are resources to recoup some money in some cases. In most states, Child Support Services (CSS) can help a custodial parent enforce court-ordered child support payments, meaning a parent can register the parent who’s not paying with CSS and CSS will do their best to find that other parent and collect what they can from wages, tax returns, or anywhere else that parent might get paid. Granted, it might not be the $500/month you were granted by the court, but as my attorney friend said of her single-mother sister, “It’s pretty nice when she gets a check for like, 70 bucks. It’s not a lot, but it’s better than nothing; and wouldn’t you be psyched to get $70 out of nowhere?”
But child support is different than all those expenses we talked about in Part 1. If the court order says $500/month in child support, and you see a few hundred bucks a year of that, oh well, but we all know that doesn’t cover nearly enough. And again, in my N of 1, I know TWO single moms whose baby daddies literally NEVER got paid in any legitimate form, never filed taxes (oh yeah), and thus, couldn’t ever be held accountable for the expense of their kids.
(And hey, btw, if your ex is behind on court-ordered payments, just search for “Child Support Services” in your area and register them. It’s worth doing, even if you never see much. You never know…).
In the case of high-conflict and post-divorce abuse though, parents have to be careful about engaging with their ex over money. Sometimes these conversations turn out to be just a pain in the ass and a huge disappointment, but sometimes they can escalate to a very uncomfortable and unfortunate place. Your ex can simply say they’re not paying for that thing they should pay for, or, your ex can threaten litigation, or threaten to modify child support, making that one expense you asked to split turn into an even more expensive mistake. Not worth it. If you’ve been married to someone who used money as a way to control you, you can be certain that that won’t change, and may even worsen, when you divorce. A spouse who controlled all the finances—didn’t give their partner access to bank accounts, credit card bills or retirement accounts—will likely continue to use money as a way to trap, coerce, and sabotage their newly divorced spouse.
This is why a good plan before you split and the decision to parallel parent once you do split is, for many women, the best and only option. Parallel parenting means parenting your children as though the other parent does not exist. You follow your court order to the letter, don’t diverge from things like custodial time and financial decisions, and everything else you do by your big self. This limits the opportunities you and your ex have to argue, thereby keeping you more sane and more present for your kids and your own life. Knowing that you may have to parallel parent before you even separate will help you create a solid foundation for your own financial security as well. This is where people like divorce financial planners, or frankly, free resources and checklists on the internet can be extremely helpful in getting you prepared to make it on your own. It is worth the time to wait to separate if it means getting your hands on all the bank statements and investment accounts, all the logins and passwords to all your financial institutions so you know what’s yours and you know how to access it. The bottom line: prepare yourself for financial independence, especially if you’ve handed over power of said finances to your spouse until now.
It took me almost 9 years after my divorce to figure out that parallel parenting included our finances. In my marriage, I gave my ex all control, responsibility, and access to all of our financials. I never so much as looked at a bank statement, a retirement account, or even knew the stock symbols for any of our investments. I worked as many hours and earned just as much as he when we were married, but I dumped my earnings into our shared pot and let him take the reins, and he was willing to keep it all from me. When it became apparent that divorce was imminent, under the cover of darkness I started to look at all that paperwork and all those online accounts to try to get my financial bearings. And there I found things I was shocked to discover—expenses I never would have ok’d, investments that were completely nuts, and money taken out of accounts in the thousands that I never saw. I tried not to hate myself for keeping myself in the dark, and for not seeing how money was just another part of the manipulation in our marriage. When we divorced, I should have expected that finances would be “a thing,” but I didn’t. My trusting nature coupled with my sincere lack of accountability with money made me think that he would be transparent about and willing to share other expenses not outlined in our agreement because we both cared about our kids. But when someone gatekeeps in the marriage, divorce doesn’t change that. I continued to ask him to split things even though all it ended up doing was pissing me off, until my own divorce coach pointed out that I kept hitting my head on the same wall and that maybe it was time to stop.
Here’s what helped me finally grok the financial benefit of parallel parenting: Independence. My financial freedom from my ex equaled my independence, and as soon as I took responsibility for that, the freer I felt. When I realized that I could, and should, just pay for as many things myself as I could it meant several things for me:
1. I didn’t have to communicate with my ex at all about money. That meant no mean emails, no stonewalling, no arguments whatsoever about the care and keeping of our kids.
2. I had the opportunity to talk to my kids about what things cost and teach them about things like budgeting, especially when larger expenses come up. #lifelessons.
3. I got to be honest with myself about my time and my money, owning that I was in the driver’s seat about earning, spending, and investing in my and my kids’ lives.
It takes a lot to financially parallel parent, but the payoff (pun intended) is 100% worth it. Like I said, it took me a long time to understand my own role in the disaster—where I handed over my financial power, where I let my self-worth and my own false beliefs about wealth and abundance get in the way of taking charge of my finances. I read a lot of books (right now, my fave is the latest “Add a Zero” by Rose Han), listened to a lot of financial podcasters, advisors, and gurus, and taped a lot of affirmations on my closet wall to help get myself out of that insecure money mindset. And maybe you’re already in a great mindset and feel confident financially taking care of your kids yourself, and that’s badass. But if you’re fighting with your ex to split costs and you’re getting nowhere, just stop. Your time, your energy, and your peace are commodities that are just as important as your dollar bills.
Can’t wait to finish the topic in Part 3, where optimism abounds at last! We’ll go over the best tips for financial parallel parenting and some good resources on where to start no matter where you are in your divorce journey.
