Facing Your Parents’ Late-life Divorce by Janice Green

Having your parents divorce is mind-bending, especially for an adult child. Your childhood memories may be challenged (was it all a facade?), family traditions are uprooted, and education or career plans may be threatened — all because your folks are calling it quits. During my 30-year divorce practice I’ve seen both the impact of parental divorce on adult children and the impact of adult children on their parents’ divorce process. After reading related questions and commentary from other moms on this site, I thought I’d offer a few ideas to ponder:

              1.         If you go with a parent to meet with an attorney, remember that the attorney-client confidentiality privilege is just between the client and attorney. Give your parent a chance to be alone with the attorney to cover sensitive topics. Yes, parents have secrets, too. Writing down questions beforehand and taking notes during the meeting will free up your parent to listen to, and form opinions about, the attorney. 

            2.         If your parents are fighting in your presence, ask them to be civil when you are in the vicinity. You have no idea how often older clients report (and respect) adult children putting their foot down, and drawing boundaries, during their parents’ divorce.

            3.         Offer to help with time-consuming tasks, such as: culling through financial records, especially when it is time to estimate living expenses, both current and future.  Sorting through records and running calculations is overwhelming to anyone of any age going through a divorce. And your help can be a welcomed relief for a parent who was not the marital bookkeeper.

            4.         If your parents are not capable of communicating with each other, consider the risks of acting as a messenger or an interpreter. There are times when they may need your help, but think twice before diving into their drama.  

            5.         Don’t find yourself being a Super Sleuth. Spying on the other parent can backfire and is best left to investigation specialists. If testimony is needed later, you do not want to be the one on the witness stand describing your mother’s tryst escapade.

            6.         Try to understand your own agenda — fearing the loss of financial support or the disruption of life as you once knew it? Concerned about a parent’s financial or emotional dependency on you? Anger at the initiating parent?  Remember that alliances can shift. For example: Daughter is mom’s confidante and echoes mom’s disdain toward dad for “dumping” the family. Later, daughter’s alliance shifts when she tires of mom’s continuing derisiveness toward dad.

            7.         Personal weaknesses and foibles are magnified during divorce. Taking sides is tempting, and sometimes appropriate. But “divorcing” a parent can put you in a difficult position if reconciliation occurs.

            8.         Help your parents design a new future. If your family home has to be sold, take photos, hold the memories, and adapt with an adventuresome spirit. In one case, my client faced the likelihood that she could not afford to keep the marital home — until she and her daughter had a creative moment.  Mom ended up renting the home to her daughter and son-in-law and redecorating her ex-husband’s workshop and garage into a really cozy efficiency apartment — big enough to suit her needs and desires. The arrangement has worked beautifully for everyone concerned.

            9.         Telling grandchildren that Grandma and Grandpa are splitting can definitely be a challenge. So much depends on the age of the children, their degree of closeness to the grandparents, and how much acrimony is flying. I have been told by grandparent-clients that they struggled with this situation, but those very close to the grandchildren often wanted to be involved in the explanation and give reassurance that both grandparents would continue to adore them.

            10.       Involvement of adult children can be helpful to an attorney. In one case I met with my new client and her daughter. Mom had to leave the room for a few minutes, and the daughter whispered, “You know, my mother has been diagnosed with early stage dementia.” No, I did NOT know! People are always nervous and forgetful in our initial meeting. This was obviously a crucial piece of information.

          The best gift a child can receive after a parental divorce is to see both parents thrive and bounce back from one of life’s most challenging upheavals. This applies to adult children as well.

            JANICE GREEN practices family law in Austin,TX, is listed in Best Lawyers in America, is a Fellow in the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, and her recently published book, Divorce After 50: Your Guide to the Unique Legal & Financial Challenges, includes a discussion about the roles adult children play in their parents’ divorce later in life.

Divorce After 50 is On the Rise

AARP (American Association of Retired Persons) conducted a study regarding divorce after the age of 50. Elizabeth Enright wrote an article delving into this study which was featured in AARP magazine for July/August of 2004. She writes “Divorce over 50 is on the rise. Women do the walking. Men don’t see it coming.”

Many individuals stay in a marriage for the children. They wait until the kids are grown then they make their move. Elizabeth Enright states that women often recognize the danger signs of a problem marriage earlier than men do. She goes on to say that one is more likely to leave a marriage earlier in proceeding marriages if they have been through a divorce before. In the AARP study 66 percent of women initiated the divorce after the age of 50 as opposed to 44 percent of men. This study also found that the men stayed in an unhappy marriage for the kids and the women stayed because of financial worry.

58 percent of men stayed for the kids whereas only 37 percent of women stayed for the kids. This isn’t a knock on the women by any means. These numbers reveal a very hard unwritten truth among men: “Why do men worry more about the children than women do? Because women take for granted that they’ll stay close to the kids. Most experts agree that men of all ages have more to lose in a divorce, especially when it comes to children. According to our survey, 42 percent of the men said that their worst fears after the divorce involved their children, with most of these men worrying they’d lose contact with their kids. In comparison, only 15 percent of women had these fears. “For men, it’s a well-founded fear,” says Vetrano, who lectures on elder divorce law nationally. “Men lose their children a lot.”
All of this brings up an interesting perspective that, at 34 with three kids under the age of 18, I hadn’t thought of prior to reading this article. I am fascinated by these statistics and would love to know how you, our readers, feel about this topic. What are your feelings on this personally? Do you have first hand experience (man or woman) with a divorce after the age of 50? Did you stay just for you kids? If so or if not, then why? Please share your views as we would love to expound on this growing epidemic as proven from the article above. To view this article in its entirety CLICK HERE.