Good Fences And Not So Good Neighbors: Property Law 101

Divorce In Old Age: What To Expect

26 January 2018 by Hunter Moore

Divorcing in old age is much different from divorcing while young, assuming the old partners have been married to the same spouses for a long time. Here are some of the issues that are more likely to apply to divorcing seniors than younger couples:

You May Not Have Custody Issues

In most cases, custody orders or arrangements cease (barring a few exceptional cases) when a child turns 18. Now, there are lots of senior citizens whose children are still minors, but there are many others that don't have minor children. Therefore, if you among those who don't have minor kids, you won't have to go through the difficult process of determining child custody.

This doesn't mean, however, that you won't be dealing with any children-related issues during your divorce. For example, if you have a post-secondary educational institution, you still have to pay for their education, and you need to agree on how to continue doing this after divorce.

You May Have Greater Financial Entanglement

Asset division is one of the most controversial and complicated divorce processes. The more your finances are entangled the more you are likely to have problems dividing your assets during a divorce. As a senior citizen, you are likely to have more assets gathered over the course of many years as compared (assuming you have been married for long) to those who are divorcing in their younger years. This means you will be having more assets to divide and it will also be more difficult to separate individual assets from marital assets. For example, you are likely to have considerable retirement savings, a classic example of an asset that is difficult to divide and whose division may have tax consequences.

Alimony May Be Forever

Lastly, there is also a high probability that the court will decide on a permanent alimony payment if you are divorcing in old age. The length of the alimony payment is usually determined by the length of the marriage, the contribution of one spouse to their counterpart's career or lifestyle and the level of inequalities in the marriage.

If you are divorcing in old age and you married early, then your marriage has obviously lasted a long time. Also, if one of you has been a stay-at-home parent for a greater part of the marriage, the court is likely to find that they contributed a lot to their partner's career. All these mean that the alimony duration is likely to be long. For great information on getting divorced, talk with Dionisio, Christopher. 

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