How to Divorce your Spouse without Losing Your Shirt

Posted on by Kristen Anders Bojarski

After many years of marriage, you’ve decided to leave your wife.  Whether it’s because you are no longer in love, or your wife is the devil incarnate, you’ve decided to get out.  You’ve reached a point in your life where you want to choose happiness over misery and freedom over obligation.

There is just one tiny little obstacle between you and freedom, however: your wife.  Well, your legal obligations to her, that is.

You’ve heard the horror stories: a friend of a friend lost their house, pension and their dog in the divorce.  Your third cousin on your mother’s side must work 3 jobs to pay his ex-wife alimony for the rest of his life.  Your co-worker paid thousands of dollars for an attorney only to end up with a terrible settlement.

While a lot of the horror stories you’ve heard are probably exaggerated, it is true that people do get bad deals in divorce.  This doesn’t have to happen to you!  If you follow a few simple rules, you can get through your divorce without losing everything in the process:

Accept what you can’t change

       The law

A marriage is a legal partnership.  When two people form a partnership in order to start a business, like a restaurant or a book store, they make certain promises to each other as far as what will happen to the business should the partnership dissolve, usually in the form of a written partnership agreement.  Marriage is kind of the same thing, except most people don’t have a written partnership agreement (i.e. a prenup) in place when they get married.  In those cases, the PA divorce code sets out the parameters for which the marriage can be dissolved, including how assets are divided and whether alimony should be paid. The law is the law, and you can’t change it.

Don’t freak out, though.  The purpose of the divorce code is to effectuate “economic justice.” It is true that some would argue that the divorce code is anything but just, but in my experience, the law does try to treat both sides fairly.

        Be realistic 

If you and your wife have minor children, and you earn more than her, you are probably going to pay her child support according to a set of statewide guidelines. There is nothing you can do about that because it’s the law. If your wife was a homemaker throughout your marriage, or if your earnings are much higher than your wife’s, and if your ability to earn income and assets in the future are far superior to hers, chances are that your wife is entitled to a skewed distribution of the assets in her favor. That doesn’t mean she will get everything, but she will likely get a little bigger slice of the pie than you.  This is because you have the resources to recover from the financial harm of the divorce more quickly than she does.

Of course, people are free to enter into any settlement agreement they want (as long as there is no fraud, duress, etc.) despite what the divorce code says.  However, both sides need to know what the court would likely order as a starting point in determining how to negotiate a settlement.

      Patience is a virtue

You must accept that the divorce process is a slow one.  If your wife refuses to consent to the divorce, there is nothing you can do about it until you have been separated for an entire year.  If your wife does consent to the divorce, but you have to go through the court process because you can’t reach a settlement with her, that also takes a ton of time.  As much as you want to get things wrapped up, you can’t force your wife or the courts to go at your pace.  Be patient.  You will get there, I promise.

Be Civil

Whoever coined the phrase “hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” must have been a husband in the process of divorcing his wife.

     Beware of the crazy wife

If your wife is angry and bitter about the divorce, refrain from engaging her in an argument.  Although uncommon, I’ve seen particularly crazy wives (see devil incarnate reference above) seek revenge by filing a bogus PFA against her husband.  Those bogus claims eventually get cleared up, but not before the client has had to incur a ton of attorney fees to fight it.  Hopefully you already know if you are married to someone who is capable of doing such a horrible thing; if so, you probably should have gotten divorced a long time ago.

     Chill out

For most people, though, fighting with your soon-to-be ex-wife costs money in other ways.  It takes a lot of money to pay a lawyer to fight your battles, so you should choose them wisely.  Plus, anger consumes a remarkable amount of energy. I’ve seen many cases where the one side is so tired of the fighting that they give in to their wife’s unfair demands just to get it over with.

If you can manage to avoid confrontation with your wife, your chances of reaching a favorable settlement without incurring an arm and a leg in attorney fees are much greater.

Be Fair and Insist on Fairness

When you are engaging in settlement negotiations, be fair. If you’ve been married 30 years, and you’ve earned a 6-figure salary for most of it, but your 50-year-old wife has never worked outside of the home, chances are a deal with no alimony is not fair to her.

If you try to be fair, you are more likely to reach an agreement without a lot of back and forth between lawyers, and without going to court, which saves you money.

       Don’t be a pansy

On the other hand, if your wife refuses to be fair with you, then don’t be afraid to go to the mattresses.  People tend to think that settling outside of court is always the most cost-effective option, but that isn’t true if settling means you must give in to your wife’s outrageous demands.

The court route involves having a hearing before a judge or a hearing officer who will issue a ruling consistent with the divorce code which does its best to treat people fairly.  You could very well end up doing better in court than you would by agreeing to an unfair settlement and avoiding court.

Hire a Divorce Lawyer

Don’t be stupid. Hire a divorce lawyer.  It boggles my mind how many people try to handle their divorce themselves.  If I changed the brakes on my car because I wanted to avoid paying a mechanic, I’d be in serious trouble.  You might think you are saving money by not hiring a lawyer, but I can tell you with certainty that you are not.

An experienced divorce lawyer will tell you what the law is and what your rights are.  They will advise you during negotiations and tell you whether it is better for you to accept a settlement or go to court.  Although the law may require you to pay child support, a lawyer will make sure you are paying the appropriate amount, and not some ridiculous above-guideline number.  If the law supports a skewed distribution of the assets in your wife’s favor, an experienced divorce lawyer will fight to make sure it is not so heavily skewed as to be prejudicial to you.

        Mistakes are expensive

There is no doubt that divorce lawyers cost money, but do you know what costs even more money?  Mistakes.  Stupid mistakes made by people who try to handle their divorces themselves.  Every year we get a couple of cases where we have to try to fix mistakes made by a party who tried to represent themselves in their divorce.  Those people always end up incurring way more attorney fees trying to fix the damage they caused themselves than if they had just hired a lawyer in the first place.

If you want to get through your divorce with as little damage to your bottom line as possible, hire an experienced divorce lawyer from the outset.

In conclusion…

If you follow these simple rules by accepting what you can’t change, doing your best to be civil, are fair with your ex and if you hire an experienced divorce lawyer, you just might make it through your divorce without completely using your shirt.

 

Dispute between Parents over Football Leads to Custody Litigation

Posted on by Barbara J. Shah

Can one parent overrule the other parent on the question of a teenager playing football?

  A Pittsburgh-area Dad wound up in court in his attempt to prevent his youngest son form playing high-school football.  Alarmed about the link between football and long-term brain damage, John Orsini tried to persuade his ex-wife to prohibit their youngest son from playing high school football.  When she refused his request, she noted that he should be allowed to continue playing because he understood the risks. She thought Dad was just being overprotective.  However, as the former head of a leading divorce lawyer association stated, the “football controversy” is actually a real medical issue.

Courts have tried to stay out of micro-managing custody disputes

So what was Orsini to do?  Local Family Court Judges strongly favor a joint or shared legal custody situation, in which important decisions are shared between parents who are separated or divorced, although physical custody arrangements which set forth the days or times the children stay with which parent may be substantially different.   However, the courts have been reluctant to get involved in decision-making relating to the children, finding that a slippery slope that encourages “revolving door” parents to come back again and again for little disputes, particularly when there is high conflict between the parents. A few years ago, Family Courts began to use “parent coordinators,” specially -trained mediators who would work with the parents and try to resolve their differences, but when agreement could not be reached, the parent coordinator was empowered to choose the position that he or she felt was best for the child.  The law which was passed to enable this procedure gave the disappointed parent the right to challenge that decision by asking the judge of the case to hold a hearing on the issue. However, within a year or two after the law was passed, the PA Supreme Court declared it unconstitutional.  Back to the drawing board.

The struggle over football is a serious issue

As reported by the New York Times on March 5, 2018, it is impossible to say precisely how many disputes over football are occurring in family courts, but it is clear that across the nation there have been increases in custody litigation related to children playing football (or hockey).  In Orsini’s case, Orsini has always been an enthusiastic supporter of football; their oldest son plays football in college. However, his view of the game changed when their second son experienced 3 sport-related concussions. Orsini felt that his son’s doctors were taking them too lightly, when they kept releasing him to play, telling Orsini that there was no medical evidence that his son should not continue to play.  Having worked as an attorney, he felt that the doctors were less than forthcoming about the risks.  He undertook research and found, among other things, that Boston University researchers reported cognitive problems in boys who began playing tackle football before the age of 12.  He instructed the school to prohibit their son  from practicing and playing football, on the ground that he and his ex-wife had joint legal custody.  Initially the school complied with his request.

What remedies are available to parents who disagree?

Orsini’s ex-wife, Janice, filed an emergency request in Family Court to allow their son to play football, arguing that she was just trying to maintain the status quo.  Mr. Orsini came to court and argued that playing football should not be considered the status quo, since their middle son had already suffered three concussions, and that common sense, together with the results of research on the brains of young boys, dictated that the son’s best interests would best be served by not permitting their youngest son to play football.  Initially, the judge allowed Mr. Orsini’s ban to stand, but 3 weeks later when Mrs. Orsini filed a petition to gain sole legal custody of their son related to this issue, the judge agreed with her and agreed to let the boy resume playing football while the case went through the regular process required of petitions for modification of custody.  The case is now going through the mediation process, but no positions have changed.  It is likely that it will be scheduled for trial at which point the judge will have to choose which parent should have legal custody to decide whether the child can play football.  In the process, the parents’ relationship, already contentious, has been badly strained, and the sons now rarely speak with their father.  The case has dragged on, and Mr. Orsini fears that if he can’t stop his son from continuing to play football, that he is on track to have serious brain damage done.

No solution seems close for this dispute.

Gerrymandering, Gun Violence and the Sad State of Legislative Gridlock

Posted on by Barbara J. Shah

According to most reports, following the September 14, 2012, Newtown, CN grade school massacre, 90% of Americans, including gun owners and NRA members, were in agreement that some stronger controls on the purchase of weapons was appropriate.  Background checks for 100% of gun purchases, eliminating the gun show loophole, and a nationwide coordinated automated registry of domestic violence perpetrators and those with mental health commitments, were favored by many of the American people.  Even the President was in favor of these measures.  Yet no such laws were even introduced into Congress, let alone voted on by the members. Why did this happen?

 

Fast forward to the Summer of 2017; although the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”) had by that time become favored by the majority of Americans, the U. S. House of Representatives passed the American Health Care Act, which, if enacted into law, would have stripped health insurance from millions of Americans, increased premiums, and given a huge tax benefit to wealthy health insurance companies and executives.  The U. S. Senate, which put together its own Obamacare repeal act, came within one vote of passing an even more draconian bill.  Rather than working with Democrats to fix the problems which were causing health insurance premiums to rise, the Republicans looked only to the Republicans to pass their legislation. Why was Congress so out of touch with the people it was elected to represent?

 

As a PA resident, I have seen similar gridlock in the legislature of this Commonwealth.  Both houses of the legislature are controlled by Republicans, and our governor is a Democrat.  I have been working with a non-partisan group known as Fair Districts PA, an anti-gerrymandering organization which advocates for an amendment to the PA Constitution to take the power of drawing PA State and Congressional Districts away from our partisan legislators and assign the job to a panel of non-partisan citizens.  In order to amend our Constitution to permit this, identical bills should be introduced and passed, one each in the PA Senate and PA House, for two consecutive legislative sessions, and then it has to be voted on by PA voters as a special question during an election.  The bills have been written and introduced, co-sponsored by both Republicans and Democrats, but the House Majority Leader refuses to call the House Bill up for a vote. It is clear that the vast majority of PA citizens are opposed to gerrymandering and would prefer maps drawn up by a non-partisan commission.  Why aren’t these bills being called up for a vote?

 

In similar fashion, the annual PA budget is at a standstill.  Although the Governor and the Republican Senate have reached agreement on a balanced budget which would institute a small severance tax on the gas extracted from fracking in PA (PA being the only state from which there is oil or gas extraction which has no such severance tax), but the PA House refuses to even consider an extraction tax.  At present this leaves a $1.9 billion hold in the budget.  The House majority leader, interviewed on NPR in October 2017, admitted that the House Democrats would vote for an extraction tax, and some of the Republican members would also accept an extraction tax, but the majority of “his caucus” was not agreeable to it, so they were not interested in pursuing that option.

 

The majority of Americans favor legislation which would allow DACA recipients a path to citizenship, however no bills to accomplish this are on the horizon.  On the other hand, the U.S. House of Representatives recently introduced and passed (with mainly Republican votes) an anti-abortion bill that I am certain the general public is not clamoring for.  Certainly, many of their “base” is supportive of this, but I am certain that few legislators paused to check with their constituents to see if this was a high priority item with them.

 

Across the nation, both state legislators have and U. S. Congressmen and Senators been refusing to hold town halls or meeting with numbers of the voters in their districts, fearing an ugly confrontation with constituents who disagree with the positions they have been taken on some of these issues. This all seems to odd.  Why wouldn’t they want to hear from their voters?  Why would they vote in ways contrary to the wishes or best interests of their constituents?

 

Legislatures have hearings on issues which everyone agrees upon, like the Equifax data breach, where Senators took turns lambasting the former CEO about what a terrible thing the data breach was.  Did we need a hearing to determine this?  Or were they just posturing for the public?  Looking at their legislative calendar, we see them proudly point to laws that celebrate local heroes or toughen restrictions on people who hurt animals, while the real issues of the day fester. Our entire legislative system has fallen into disarray.

 

The one theme which runs through all of these illustrations is that party loyalty now trumps state, district or local issues. In as many as 20 U.S. states, the election districts are “rigged” or gerrymandered to yield a majority of “safe” seats to members of one political party or another. This is done through a variety of methods, generally the majority party in a state legislature drawing electoral boundaries using computerized voter data and maps, which “pack” or “crack” groups of voters into voting districts to result in a permanent majority for that party in the legislature, or in the U. S. Congress, following a U. S. Census.  For example, the majority Republicans redrew the Wisconsin legislative districts in 2011 (following the 2010 Census), in such a manner as to produce a result that, while Democratic candidates for Wisconsin legislative seats won a clear majority of votes in 2012 and 2014, they were never able to capture more than 39 of Wisconsin’s 99 legislative seats.

 

As a result, loyalty to the wishes of party leaders or the party “caucus” has become more important than listening to the desires of the voters in that legislator’s district.  If a legislator has the temerity to “disobey” the party leader or caucus, they are likely to face a well-financed primary opponent in their next re-election bid.  And who votes in the primaries?  Across the nation it is the same in “closed primary” states (like PA), where only voters registered as members of that party, often a small minority of voters, mostly the party faithful, end up voting in the primaries, nominating candidates who are on good terms with their party leaders.  Voters who are not aligned with either of the major parties are left out of the candidate selection process altogether. CA has chucked this entire system, with entirely open primaries, so that the “top two” vote-getters will face each other in the fall election.  They, a progressive state, are the only state in the US with this electoral system.

 

The big money that is allowed in political campaigns due to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in 2014 in the Citizens United case.  has also exacerbated this problem of candidates not paying attention to local issues, because it seems that all races are “nationalized,” by painting the disfavored candidate as a “tool” of the right-wing or left-wing “radicals.”

 

A recent poll indicates that the political parties in this country are now more divided on issues than ever before; in earlier days, Senators and Congressmen often worked “across the aisle” to solve this nation’s problems. Nowadays that has almost become a thing of the past.  The U.S. Supreme Court has just heard arguments on a case brought by Wisconsin voters, which claims that their politically gerrymandered districts violate the Constitution and threaten our democracy.  A similar lawsuit is pending in PA.  Something definitely needs to change, if our legislative bodies are to return to caring about local issues and the hopes and dreams of their constituents, rather than a national strategy.  Let’s hope we find a way back to the system the writers of our Constitution intended, and away from unyielding partisan positions.

 

Bifurcation in a Pennsylvania Divorce Proceeding

Posted on by Barbara J. Shah

The term “bifurcation” means to divide something into two parts.  When this term is applied to a divorce, it generally means, “Can I get divorced – legally free to remarry and file my taxes as single – while other issues such as property division are still pending?”  Before 1980, the term did not apply to PA divorces.  The only kind of divorce allowed before that was a “fault” divorce (where the spouse who wanted a divorce had to allege “grounds” for divorce – that they were entirely innocent and the other spouse had committed such bad acts as to cause the marriage to fail – and then prove those grounds in a trial). If they were successful, or if the other spouse simply didn’t put up a defense, the divorce was granted. Property division was easy, as it followed “title.” that is, if a bank account or a pension or a piece of real estate was in your name, you owned it after the divorce, free and clear of any claims by the other spouse.  If an asset was owned jointly, it was to be split between the parties 50-50.  There was no post-divorce alimony.

If you thought that was still the law in PA, you are more than 35 years behind the times!  The Divorce Code of 1980, which became effective that year, revolutionized divorce law in PA. Many Pennsylvanians had been living separate and apart for many years, resigned to fact that that if they were not the “innocent and injured spouse,” they could not get a divorce from their former loved one.   Suddenly in 1980, the floodgates opened. “No-fault” divorce became legal in PA.  As originally written, the law granted the right for a “guilty” spouse who had been living separate and apart for 3 years or more to request a divorce from the “innocent” spouse by filing an affidavit alleging a 3 year or more separation, and serving it on the other spouse.  Suddenly there was no defense to the divorce, and the best thing the defendant/spouse could do was to request from the court a fair property distribution and some alimony.  For other just then separating couples, it gave the left-behind spouse a 3-year window to get ready for the divorce.   In 1987, the law was changed to turn the 3-year separation requirement into a 2-year separation.  By 2016 it left PA one of the few states in the US with a long separation requirement, possibly the longest one.  However, in 2016, the PA legislature again changed the law to allow a party to request a divorce from the other spouse after only a 1-year separation (so long as that separation began after December 3, 2016).   Of course, if both spouses agreed to a divorce under the 1980 Divorce Code, they could file their consents to the divorce at any time after 90 days from the date the divorce was served on the other party.  That portion of the law has never changed.

However, this entire discussion about “no-fault” divorce involves the divorce only; property division, (called “equitable distribution” by the new divorce code”), alimony, and requests for attorney fees could not be addressed until grounds for a divorce had been established.   Unlike the previous “title” approach to property division, equitable distribution assumes that everything acquired during a marriage by either party, regardless of title, is “marital property” and will be divided between the parties according to what is “fair,” by the courts, if the parties are unable to agree.

During the period when a “no-fault” divorce could only be requested after a 3-year separation (or even a 2-year separation) in PA, bifurcation was a hot topic. In addition, those couples who had been separated for (sometimes many more than) 3 years at the time the new Divorce Code became effective, were anxious to move on with their lives.  They wanted a mechanism whereby the divorce itself could be granted while property division was pending.   Initially, the courts often “bifurcated” divorces as a matter of course.  However, because of the problems of dividing pensions, pensions beneficiary designations, the loss of health insurance, and a host of other issues, the courts began to deny bifurcation if one spouse said no.  In 2004, an amendment to the Divorce Code put an end to bifurcation of divorces.  Although under certain extreme circumstances divorces can still be bifurcated, especially now that the one-year separation rule has gone into effect, requests for bifurcation are less and less likely to be made, and less likely to be granted by the courts.

A Lesson About Honesty

Posted on by Kristen Anders Bojarski

Yesterday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from any investigations into Russia’s alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election after it was discovered that he failed to disclose two meetings he had with the Russian ambassador during the campaign at his senate confirmation hearing.  Sessions maintains that he didn’t intend to mislead the committee, and promised to issue a statement clarifying his testimony.  President Trump stated on his Facebook page that while Sessions’ responses could have been more accurate, it was clearly not intentional.

As one who spends a lot of time preparing witnesses for trial, I find it hard to believe that Sessions did not intentionally omit this information.  Russian interference in the election is a hot button issue – Sessions and his lawyers had to have expected that he would be asked questions about his ties with Russia, and thus prepared to answer those questions.  By not disclosing the information, Sessions made a terrible mistake that will likely haunt him, and the President, for years to come.   Let this be an important lesson to all of us: always be honest.

In almost every Family Law case that I handle, one or both parties have behaved badly at one point.  We are human after all.  When we are hurt, we want to get revenge.  When we are angry, we lash out.  Some of us even have skeletons in the closet.   Sometimes a party has an asset or a source of income they want to hide.

I always instruct my clients to tell the truth.  Don’t lie about your income, and disclose everything.  If you did something bad, be honest about it.  The bad stuff always comes out eventually, so disclose it on your own terms and not opposing counsel’s.   You and your lawyer can come up with a strategy for disclosing the information in a way that will have as little impact as possible on your case.

I can guarantee that the extra source of income or bad behavior will have less of an impact on your case than lying will.  If you are caught lying in court, you will lose all credibility with the judge on your case, and there may be other consequences, such as having to pay the other side’s attorney fees as sanctions, or in severe cases, imprisonment.

Sessions should have been upfront with the committee.  Maybe they were totally innocent meetings and he did nothing wrong.  But because Sessions chose not to disclose the meetings, he now looks like he was trying to hide something, and thus loses credibility.  Issuing a clarifying statement after the fact will not restore Sessions’ reputation.  The damage has been done.

So let this be a lesson to you: always be honest.

I WANT A DIVORCE! (OR DO I?)

Posted on by Barbara J. Shah

Most people have heard the old saw, “Marry in haste, repent at leisure.” Surprisingly enough, there are those who divorce in haste and repent it later. Pennsylvania is one of the last bastions of the long wait for a divorce, when one spouse resists it. In the absence of consent, the waiting period prescribed by PA law is 2 years from the date of “final separation,” which is defined by PA statute and caselaw. If both parties consent to the divorce, the waiting period is 90 days, pretty much in line with the rest of the country. When I started practicing law in the early 1980’s shortly after the passage of the PA Divorce Code of 1980, the waiting period was three years! That was reduced to 2 years by an amendment to the divorce code in 1987. There are numerous calls to reduce the 2-year waiting period, to 18 months, one year, or even 6 months, and bills to lessen the waiting period are introduced every session, but so far none of them has gained traction in PA’s bloated legislature. There is no question that the Catholic Church has had an influence on PA divorce legislation in the past; whether that will continue in the future is uncertain. However, the central part of PA is very conservative, so I wouldn’t bet that the law is going to change very soon. In fact, I hope it does not.

Why should people be forced to wait such a long time if they want to move on with their lives? The answer is elusive, but here is my point of view on the subject: People enter into marriage with the implicit and explicit understanding that this union of two people is forever; two bodies, one soul, one family unit. Many stresses occur which may cause the union to falter, but are or should these stresses be fatal to the marriage? Mind you, I am not one of those people who would have supported the continuance of PA’s fault-only divorce which existed before 1980. That led to all kinds of perversion of the law which weren’t good for anyone. However, what is wrong with a 2-year wait for a “no-fault” divorce? It is a great cooling-off period which gives the parties time to reflect and make sure that a divorce is really what they wanted. Does he or she have a hot-and-heavy relationship with another that may cool during this 2-year wait? Well, then, that relationship is not one for the ages. Well, what if your spouse is a real louse, abusive, etc.? There are several answers. First of all, just separate. Move out. If your spouse makes more money than you, file for support. If you make more money than your spouse, you have a defense to spousal support – abuse! Getting a divorce cuts you off from your spouse’s health insurance; in the past, before the ACA, that was extremely important, sometimes crucial, if you had a pre-existing condition. Second, PA still has fault divorces; if you really want a divorce and you have grounds for a fault divorce, (and a divorce makes economic sense to you), go for it! However, let me suggest that you use at least some of the 2-year “cooling off” period thoughtfully provided for PA citizens by its legislature. I won’t say that a high percentage of our cases reconcile during this period, but we’ve seen some amazing turn-arounds, some from sobriety, others from counseling, and others from the parties living apart realizing that the grass may really not be greener on the other side. Even infidelity sometimes turns out to be forgivable, under the appropriate circumstances.

Divorce may end up being the best option, but other options should at least be considered. Don’t rush into a divorce blindly in a fit of anger; it may lead to a lifetime of regret.

Staying Together for the Sake of the Kids is Usually a Terrible Idea

Posted on by Barbara J. Shah

No two families are alike, and everyone’s marriage and marital problems are unique, to a point.  However, after many years of divorce practice, there are some things that have become clear.  First of all, for the purposes of this article, I am not going to discuss religious beliefs and practices.   I can safely assume that no one’s religion or religious practices countenances the torture of children.  If yours does, stop reading; this article is not for you.

People who carry on marital battles in an “intact household,” that is, where no one moves out and the parties remain residing in the same residence while fighting with each other (or maintaining a stony silence), seem to be to be like people who are beating their heads against the wall.  Why are they doing this?  If they are just two adults living together, some just work it out and go and come like ships in the night.  Everyone has their own reason, and if it is not emotionally exhausting to carry on such a lifestyle, well, who am I to stop them?  Except that how can they be truly happy?  How can they carry on socially, have friends over for drinks or dinner, etc?  How can they develop a new love life?  Why are they hanging on to this empty husk of a marriage?

The real rub comes in when there are children of any age in the household.  What is the purpose of family life?  To form an economic and emotional unit where each supports the other and the children learn love (and independence, hopefully) under the loving guidance of their parents (or parent, in the case of a single-parent family)?  Well, that is the plan.  The children observe and learn how to behave in a family, and they are able to take risks, because they are secure in the love and guidance of their parents.  If they fail at an enterprise, they have the confidence that they will still be loved at home, and most parents will encourage them to keep trying until they succeed.

What happens when children live in a household where their parents are at war?  At the very top of the terrible scale, if they observe domestic violence perpetrated on one parent by the other, it will form a permanent impression on them.  There is plenty of solid research available which tracks the effect on children’s later lives of witnessing parent-on-parent violence, and it is pretty depressing.  A parent who stays with an abusive parent is doing no favor at all to the children.  I realize that it is not easy to separate from a violent parent, but ignoring the effect on the children of witnessing parent-on-parent violence is not a wise option either.

Although domestic violence is a serious and under-reported marital problem, living in an unhappy household where there is no actual physical violence is not very healthy for children either. Let’s assume this is a household where the parents argue regularly, whether over money or any other major issue.  First of all, those who believe that their children do not know they are fighting are kidding themselves. Children ALWAYS know when their parents are fighting.  We know that even in the most stable of marriages parents fight.  The difference is:  do they make up?  Do they apologize to each other?  Do they figure out ways to work out the issue their fight was about?  When children see their parents working out their differences in a constructive way, it is an important learning experience for them. They learn how to cope with different ideas and opinions of their partners and work out their differences in a civilized manner.

The problem in a household where the parents are always at war or always angry with each other is that children don’t observe a healthy pattern of behavior to pattern themselves after. Studies clearly reveal that these children are at risk, and that they will experience problems in forming healthy adult relationships later in life.  So, if you are one of those parents who is “staying together for the sake of the children” with an abusive/angry spouse, but in doing so are exposing them to ongoing marital strife, think again.