Divorce is straightforward, right? You get a lawyer, do the paperwork, file it in court, eventually get a decree absolute and you’re done. In fact, in our groundbreaking research about divorce and women in midlife, NOON found that the journey is often misunderstood – and more confusing – than expected. Here, we reveal what you need to know about divorce.
Our “Beyond the Break: The truth about divorce for women in midlife” report incorporates the attitudes of women across the country from varying social groups, benchmarked to the UK population, as well as in-depth interviews from focus groups. It was done in conjunction with the leading legal firm Mishcon de Reya and financial advisors Julius Baer. It reveals:
- Women often don’t know what’s involved in divorce and the steps
- A lack of overview or road map of what’s to come makes divorce more difficult
- Finding a good lawyer can feel like an arbitrary process, sometimes with mixed results
- Few women seek financial advice
- Informal networks of family and friends don’t provide enough information and support
- Women want more support and advice on everything from finding the right advisors to meeting likeminded women who understand what they’re going through
Divorce is a three-pronged process
One of the main things you need to know about divorce is that while we think about it as a purely legal exercise, it actually involves 3 processes. All of these are important and all require attention and support. They are:
- The legal process
- The financial process
- The emotional process
Even more challenging is that each of these advance at different speeds, we found.
The majority understand the need to engage a lawyer (59%). Yet they are unprepared for the financial, psychological and emotional aspects they encounter. As a result, they feel unsupported and out of their depth. This applies whether women initiate the separation or not.
An example of the three process:
Legal: A divorcing couple whether they should sell the house, share it or one of them keeps it – a decision often influenced about how it was purchased and with what ratio of contributions.
Financial: They must determine who gets what percentage of the sale price and how it affects the larger financial settlement
Emotional: They must decide how to contents of the house inside, help their children (if any) understand what’s happening and go through the emotional process of letting go of a space that was a home filled with memories
Women don’t have the experts they need
Few women seek the help of other experts, such as financial advisors (9%) or support professionals – e.g. divorce coaches (5%) or counsellors/therapists (14%). The low uptake of professional advice can be surprising, given that 65% are concerned about their financial wellbeing and 55% about their mental wellbeing.
One of the ways that women are finding advice now is by turning to easy-to-access online sources: 4% used ChatGPT for support and advice, and 9% looked to social media. In fact, the combination of online searches, AI large language models and social media assisted 43% of divorcing women.
Finding the right legal representation is difficult
Even at the beginning of divorce, you told us that what you need to know about divorce is that first step: finding a lawyer. 59% of women in our survey used a lawyer or solicitor, yet in focus groups we repeatedly heard that many began the process with no idea how to find one.
“It’s hard as there’s no central register of divorce lawyers or what they specialise in,” said a London-based woman.
As a result, women rely on suggestions from friends, Google searches and random choices. Few described interviewing several lawyer to find the right one for their situation. Serendipity played a huge part.
One woman met her lawyer at a women-in-business networking event. “We sat next to each other at lunch. I said: ‘I’m never going to need your services’ but took her card. Five months later, my husband left…I immediately rang Jane who said: ‘Don’t agree to anything until we’ve met.’ It was great advice.”
Lawyers and the process itself makes divorce more difficult
In our survey, 53% of women said their lawyer made the process easier, while 37% stated that the lawyer acting for the other side seemed to make things harder. In the London group, four of the women described “feeling physically sick” whenever a letter from their spouse’s solicitor landed on the doormat.
The legal process itself also made things more difficult, according to 35% of divorced women, as did legal jargon and terminology (40%). This points to the need for divorce lawyers to not only advocate for their clients but also ensure clients are better informed of the steps, the language and the legal concepts they are dealing with.
Financial fears are rife
Our report highlights women’s anxiety around money post-divorce – and a deep divide between that desire to be financial secure and their knowledge and awareness about the marital money.
Traditional roles within their marriages were often cited – she looks after the house and kids, he looks after the finances and bills. This situation left many women disempowered and without a thorough knowledge of their situation when embarking on divorce.
Many women in our focus groups described not knowing the state of their joint finances, where their money was kept or invested or even what their husband earned. only 29% of women understood their financial situation prior to their divorce.
Men do the money, women do the home
The survey brought women’s financial vulnerability into sharp focus – something that could occur even when the wife worked in business or had a job in finance.
Many talked described being so busy running the home, bringing up children, and working that they left money matters to their husbands. The idea that finance is a ‘blue job’ is so persistent that one woman explained that even after her divorce, when she got her long-battled-for settlement, “I gave it to my husband to invest; I don’t understand any of that.”
Juliet’s story (age 49, London)
“When I met my husband, I had two kids from a first marriage and was running my own business. He wanted me to have another child and was much wealthier than me, so I ran the kids and the house and looked after our social life.
“His side of the bargain was that he said he would look after us all financially. I just hadn’t got the brain space to be interested in the financial arrangements too, there was so much admin. I just let him get on with it.
“Then when it all fell apart, I felt such shame and so pathetic about my lack of financial nous: I didn’t even know how much our house was worth, or how much he earned, or about his pension or our assets – and I am a businesswoman! But it was just part of the deal.
“He swept me off my feet and promised to look after it all…and I fell for it. When we met I felt like I had won the lottery, that he would look after me, like that was what I was supposed to do, supposed to want. But now I see that choice was so wrong and dangerous.”
Financial advice and confronting the ‘Disney’ myth
What do women want after their divorce? “Financial security in old age” was top of the list for a third of women. A full 65% of divorced women had concerns about their financial wellbeing. Yet, Only 9% of divorced women had taken financial advice.
Why the discrepancy?
Many of the women in our focus groups expressed a mistrust of financial professionals. This attitude was partly linked to their own lack of financial education. Some also talked about financial firms not being welcoming. The high net worth women we spoke with complained about the ‘hyper masculine’ world of private wealth – all “men in blue suits” “with racing cars in the foyer, fat financial reports full of jargon and coffee out of a machine” in lieu of being taken to lunch and courted as clients.
Our report also shows that only 15% of Independent Financial Advisors are women, meaning it is harder for women to find advisors they can identify with and who speak their language.
Ella, 54, living in Surrey, said: “When I try and learn more, the whole subject is so full of jargon that it makes me feel stupid and out of my depth and then I feel patronised when I speak to my accountant.”
As gendered ageism pushes a generation of women from the workforce – despite the need for many to work until age 68 to qualify for state pension – the urgent need to provide financial advice and guidance is evident. Currently, women retire with 35% less in their pensions than men and they live longer.
“I understand buying a house, doing it up and flipping it, but investments feel less inside my comfort zone,” said Zoe, 54, Cheshire.
Old notions of marriage persist with this generation
Many felt that the lack of financial empowerment is a hangover from previous generations – they described not being raised to think that finances were something they needed to know or take control of.
One said: “We are the first generation who worked all the way through and are now being expected to work post-divorce too. That is different. Yet we were brought up on the myth of ‘we’re going to find this perfect man who will look after us’. Our generation was sold on the Disney ending. We were very much raised on that idea that our prince would come, told to trust our husbands and be good wives and mothers…the Disney ending.”
The emotional process comes afterward
Quantitative research shows that after divorcing, women describe feeling high levels of relief, happiness and freedom.
Yet to reach that point, women talked about going through what was in effect a two-part emotional process. Many of the women we spoke to talked about “hanging on” or “it’s about survival” during the divorce. They described maintaining focus on handling the complexities of the divorce, negotiating with their husbands and keep up with all the responsibilities they shouldered during the marriage. They had to “carry on to support the kids and do my job”, through the strain of separation.
Only after legal and financial processes were resolved could they allows themselves to feel and process their emotions. In our focus groups, women spoke of “falling apart”, expressing grief, sadness, tears and overwhelm.
Mel, 51, from the Cheshire focus group said: “The emotional processing, that sadness, had to be put on hold. I had to focus on custody and money for the sake of my children. I pushed the emotional stuff down so I could survive, but it burst back at me. It was like opening Pandora’s box and when the settlement was done, I fell apart. I couldn’t stop crying.”
Women also talked about how divorce created dark times but the end result is a feeling of a rebirth. After their marriage was over, they were free to embark on a new chapter.
