Jennifer Hargrave recently sat down with KRLD 1080 to discuss the price of divorce and how couples can work together to bring down costs.Â
David Rankin:
Welcome to Ask the Expert North Texas here on NewsRadio 1080 KRLD. I’m David Rankin.
Kristin Diaz:
Recent survey revealing that 34% of Texas couples who want to divorce can’t because of their financial reasons. Really curious about this and here to speak more about it is Jennifer Hargrave. She is with the Hargrave Family Law and it’s just really interesting that people’s financial situations because of whatever we might have been going through, the pandemic or the inflation, could be affecting them in their relationships. Does this surprise you at all?
Jennifer Hargrave:
It doesn’t surprise me at all. I mean of course we know that financial stress is a big deal for families. I would say it’s sort of a symptom of a relationship that’s breaking down. If it’s not good communication and you’re just not on the same page with life goals or whatever, then we see that in the financial discord in a lot of relationships. But of course divorce is expensive and so people are factoring that in as well. And another way to reframe it and look at it is for some families, divorce is actually on sale because your assets are worth so much less. So it can be an opportunity to get out of the marriage, but if cost is what’s prohibiting a family from ending a broken marriage, the first thing I just want to say is my heart goes out to you because I know living in a broken marriage is incredibly stressful and especially stressful when you feel stuck because you don’t have financial options.
But I think people need to know and understand that there are lots of options out there and they need to explore those options because we know that the toll of staying in a broken marriage, it’s taxing not only financially but also on your health. It just creates so much stress. So hopefully we can explore some of those today and empower people to make a better decision.
David Rankin:
And it also can just be literally dangerous to not only your health but the health and welfare of your kids.
Jennifer Hargrave:
Absolutely. A lot of people stay in a marriage saying that they want to protect their children, but what they don’t know and understand is how conflict in the house is so damaging for kids. And so sometimes, I mean, I always say you don’t have to be divorced to have conflict in your house, it is that conflict when you’re living through, the kids are seeing day in and day out and you’re role modeling for them what marriage looks like. And so we know that that’s taxing.
Kristin Diaz:
You said there are multiple options people can take. What are some of those options?
Jennifer Hargrave:
I think people need to know, first of all there’s lots of information and we’re fortunate in Texas, there’s a website called texaslawhelp.org where you can go and get information that’s provided really from the state bar for resources, for forms, for filing and so forth. There are also some other services that are providing legal help. I know like Hello Divorce is one, Divorce Concierge. I can’t list them all, but there are lots of services out there where people can get some help with the forms.
The other thing that I often recommend is instead of really doing it yourself because that can be really risky and we do see people… It’s complicated and it can get really messed up and while you’re trying to save money, it really just ends up costing a whole lot more money on the back end when you have to go fix the problems. And so I encourage people like contact lawyers who do unbundled services or limited scope representation. We do that all the time. So we will sit down with people that’ll pay for an hour or two or three of time for a lawyer to walk through the process to look at the decree and make sure that it says what they want it to say and that we’ve divided all the assets and done all of that. And so that can be a really good use of time and money. It’s just instead of doing a full representation with a lawyer, is just to use the lawyer to help make sure you’re doing everything.
David Rankin:
How important is it to plan before you start filing paperwork to set up your own homestead, to set up your own accounts to make these plans for the future?
Jennifer Hargrave:
Certainly planning is helpful if you have time, I think especially if you’ve been a spouse that’s been out of the workforce. If you have time to retool your skills, maybe get some more education, get your foot in the door and begin to generate some income for yourself, that’s going to be really, really helpful. I’m going to tell you for a lot of people, I mean there’s not a lot of planning and we do it, we help them get through the divorce all the time.
And the other thing I think for somebody that’s hard is once you’ve made the decision to divorce, when you’re not sharing that decision with your spouse, it can just increase the drama and that sense of betrayal or whatever when you’ve been living with that decision for a while. So usually spouses don’t like to find out that their spouses are planning a divorce for the past three years. That’s usually very, very unsettling.
Kristin Diaz:
And speaking the past three years, we were talking to you just last year or the year before that when we were seeing a spike in divorces because people were working from home, spending more time with their spouses at home and realizing, “I may not really like you and I’m having to spend all this time with you.” Has that changed at all now since the last time we spoke?
Jennifer Hargrave:
I mean, I will tell you this is anecdotally my experience and when I’m talking with other family lawyers, we are busier than ever. So when you tell me that 34% of the people who would’ve filed divorce aren’t filing, that’s a big number. But we are still seeing a lot of divorces happening. One of the things that concerns me is that the divorces are higher conflicts and if finances are an issue… And really for anybody, you need to know conflict costs money. So anytime we’re having to fight it out with lawyers, it’s just going to be a lot more expensive. So to the extent that people can really examine is the fight worth it, then that’s going to help save costs if we can pick the battles. But yeah, we are still seeing a lot of divorces and I think it is the fallout from what the past couple years has been like with all the stress with the pandemic and just the economy.
David Rankin:
And speaking of the economy, the economy will ebb and flow. It goes in cycles. Do divorce rates cycle alongside the same way?
Jennifer Hargrave:
We do see some of that. I mean, of course, it can also be an inverse reaction because of the financial stress we’re talking about that could be so hard on families. I mean if you’re flushed with cash and everybody’s got lots of money, maybe they’re just living separate lives and it’s not such a big deal. But when the finances are limited, I mean that’s just another stressor on so many families. So there are times often when we see the economy dip and the divorce rate spikes as well.
Kristin Diaz:
Is there any data that’s showing right now the age range for people who are married and likely to get divorce or the length of time that they’ve been in a marriage?
Jennifer Hargrave:
That’s a really good question. I believe what we’re seeing is people pushing marriage off until later. And I would be really curious to see the correlation of people who get married later in life after you’ve been living on your own for a while. I mean look, marriage is so important and even though I do divorces every day, I’m a big advocate for marriage and for people really entering into marriage with the tools and resources to build healthy marriages. And if you’re in a marriage that’s broken, I always want to suggest there are options. There’s something called discernment counseling where people can get help working with a therapist to figure out, “Do I want to stay in the marriage or do I not want to stay in the marriage?” I often will send people off to go meet with the discernment counselor and then we don’t hear from them. So I mean think it might work.
But yeah, in my business we’re definitely seeing a broad range. I mean, 20-plus-year marriages with kids. Sometimes people wait until the kids are grown and out of the house before they get a divorce. So I call that the empty nest divorce. That’s definitely a trend as well. So we are seeing… I know one of the newer trends is that we’re seeing people decide to divorce later in life. So you get through the retirement years and you think, “Oh, we’ll be with each other until death.” And then one of the partners decides to leave. So that’s an interesting conversation and an interesting trend that we are seeing.
David Rankin:
And speaking of numbers, do you also see more people that are repeat filers? They go through one divorce, they marry someone else, and then they don’t necessarily hang on along because they saw what they went through the first time.
Jennifer Hargrave:
Right. I mean, I’ve definitely heard and seen the studies that somebody gets divorced once and that actually increases the likelihood they’re going to get divorced a second time around. I’ll tell you, in my experience, what I really see is people making smarter, better decisions the second time around. So maybe that’s just my clientele, I don’t know. But I see a lot of… We keep in touch with a lot of our clients who are very, very happy in their second marriages and that of course makes me happy too. But I think you have to really do a lot of growth and be very self-aware as to why did that first marriage fail and look to disrupt those patterns so you just don’t repeat them again. But yeah, we see people go on to second marriages and have amazing lives.
Kristin Diaz:
Going back to the survey and speaking specifically about the financial burden of a divorce, how does the price of a divorce differ from here in Texas to the rest of the nation?
Jennifer Hargrave:
Well that’s a really good question. I can tell you that in my practice because we are tracking this, so our average cost of a divorce is going to be about 12 to $15,000. There are obviously some that are more simple and much less costly than that. And then there are of course those that are much more costly. So again, depending on how much conflict we have, how much time we’re having to spend in court, that’s all going to factor in. Other states, they have very different processes. I know in Texas for example, it’s a 60-day waiting period. There are states where you have a two-year waiting period and I just think, “Oh my god, that’s got to be horrible to have to be going through a divorce for two years when you could otherwise have done it quicker.” So it’s going to vary widely, but probably across the country, I mean we’re probably right in about the ballpark of what a divorce will cost.
David Rankin:
Does Texas being a no-fault state increase the number of divorces as well?
Jennifer Hargrave:
Oh, I love topic. You guys are asking such good questions. Listen, no, being a no-fault divorce I don’t think makes divorce easier. What it does do is it allows you to protect the privacy and dignity of the family, which I think is so important. There are always reasons why people get a divorce. I’ve never had somebody come into my office and say, “I don’t have anything better to do today. I want a divorce and so sign me up for one of those no-fault things.” Everybody has a reason why they want a divorce, and trying to pin faults on the reason why the marriage failed I think just creates so much animosity and discord and families. It’s very hard to come back from. And natural human tendency is to want to blame everybody. And so in a fault-finding state, that’s great. We have to blame each other, but it’s just nonsense in my opinion. What we really need to do is focus on solving the problems and getting you through the divorce.
Kristin Diaz:
Forgive me, but I’m not familiar with that term and I’m not sure if all of our listeners do know what that means. Could you break that down?
Jennifer Hargrave:
Yeah. Okay. So it used to be in the old days that you could only get a divorce if you could prove fault. And there are several grounds for fault, but one of them is adultery. That’s one of the most popular ones and we still have it. I mean you still have the option, you can prove adultery if you want. Cruel treatment is another one. Having lived apart for a number of years, if somebody’s committed in a mental hospital for a long period of time. I mean, those are sort of like the off ones. Usually it’s cruel treatment and adultery are the ones that we see. And so back in the old days you would have to prove it. You wouldn’t get a divorce unless you could prove that there was a reason why the marriage had to end.
I think probably… I don’t know the history of this. Maybe in the ’70s, ’80s, they changed that and introduced something called no-fault divorce, which is, you know what?The marriage is insupportable. We’re just not going to be able to continue to live together and we’re not going to have to prove grounds. But I hear people say all the time that that’s the reason why divorce is prevalent and I disagree with that. The reason why divorce happens is because marriages are broken.
Kristin Diaz:
Fascinating. That is Jennifer Hargrave with Jennifer Hargrave Family Law. Thank you so much for your time. We really appreciate it and just fascinating.
Jennifer Hargrave:
My pleasure. Thank you.
