THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES OF DIVORCE

• Published date: 01 January 1994
• Author: Marsha Garrison
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.174-1617.1994.tb00318.x
• Date: 01 January 1994

THE ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES

OF

DIVORCE

Marsha Garrison

This article objectively reviews the effects of divorce on the financial well-being of families.

Women and children suffer disparities in income, but the differences are not

as

great

as

publicized in other studies

and

diminish with remarriage. The absence of marriage, not the

presence of divorce,

is

the major cause ofpoverty for women.

Divorce law today is under attack. Among its critics, many claim that

modern divorce law is a primary cause of poverty among divorced women

and their children.

As

one prominent critic has put it,

The net effect

of

the present

rules

for

property,

alimony, and child

support

is

severe financial hardship for most divorced

women

and their children.

. .

.

They

have

become

the new poor.

,

.

.

The

result is that we

are

sentencing a significant

portion of the next generation of American children to periods of financial

hardship. (Weitzman,

1985,

p.

xiv)

This is a powerful indictment, based on two separate charges against

divorce law: first, that divorce law is unfair because it disproportionately

imposes the economic hardship occasioned by divorce on women and

children, and, second, that these unfair results imposed by divorce law

are

an important cause of poverty. Divorce law

is

thus, the critics urge, a major

source of the so-called feminization of poverty

that

is widely viewed

as

a

major social problem.

These charges

are

serious and urgent. More than a million American

families experience divorce each year

(U.S.

Bureau of the Census, 1992b,

Table 127).

If

divorce law, systematically and unequally, does impose the

hardship of divorce upon the women and children in these families, if the

consequence of such inequality is widespread impoverishment, we cannot

afford to ignore it.

The first question, of course, is the accuracy

of

the charges. Evidence on

both the claim

of

unfairness and that

of

the relationship between divorce and

Author's Note: This article ir denvedfrom a presentation made

at

the

annual

meeting of the

Association of Family

and

Conciliation Courts in

New

Orleans in

May

1993.

The author's

research described in the article was supported

by

the Alfred

P:

Sloan Foundation. Additional

research assistance was provided by the Brooklyn Law School Faculty Research Fund.

FAMILY

AND

CONCILIATION

COUES

REVIEW,

Vd.

32

No.

1,

January

1994

10.26

Q

1994

Sage

Publications,

Inc.

10

Garrison

/

ECONOMIC CONSEQUENCES

OF

DIVORCE

11

poverty is now available from a variety of sources. What follows is a review

of that evidence and its implications for divorce reform.

DIVORCE ENTITLEMENTS AND TYPICAL OUTCOMES

PROPERTY

DMSION

At first glance, the available data on property division suggest that divorce

law’s critics are simply wrong. Despite claims that women

are

typically

awarded less than half the marital property at divorce (Cohen

&

Hillman,

1985; Weitzman, 1985,pp. 104-107),

inthevastmajorityofstates

thatrequire

equitable rather than

equal

division of marital assets, the available evidence

suggests otherwise. Researchers to date have uniformly found that, on

average, divorced wives receive at least half of the net family assets (Garrison,

1991, Table 20). Although these findings would suggest that divorced wives

are

doing well, the percentages

are

misleading for several reasons.

First, the vast majority of divorcing couples have very little to divide. This

fact was first reported in the 1950s (Goode, 1956, p. 217) and has been

reaffied by a substantial number of later researchers (Garrison,

199

1, Table

9; Weitzman, 1992, pp. 94-95). In most states, the median net value of marital

assets does not appear to exceed $25,000. It is thus not surprising that more

than two thirds of divorced women polled by the Census Bureau report that

they received no property settlement whatsoever

(U.S.

Bureau of the Census,

1991a, p.

2).

Second, the divorcing couple’s limited net worth is typically concentrated

in the €amily home, household goods, and the family car, nonliquid assets

that are difficult to use for current consumption (Garrison, 1991, pp. 664-666,

also Table

5).

Current distribution patterns exacerbate this liquidity problem

for the wife. In the typical property division, her share tends to

be

concen-

trated in household furnishings and the marital home, which is probably

subject to a significant mortgage obligation (Garrison, 1991, pp. 684-685).

Wives ordinarily receive the lion’s share of these assets, but they seldom

receive a substantial portion of business assets or real estate (when these

assets exist) or even the pension, which generally represents the bulk of the

couple’s retirement savings (Garrison, 1991, pp. 683-684; Weitzman, 1992,

pp. 122-123). The substantial share of marital assets typically granted the

wife thus seldom provides meaningful liquid capital.

Third, the available evidence suggests that deferred distribution of the

family home when there are minor children is ordered with increasing

infrequency. Research that I conducted on divorce outcomes in New York