Family law professors June Carbone and Naomi Cahn have written a book entitled “Marriage Markets” that examines marriage against the backdrop of today’s national economy. The depth of the book cannot be expressed in a short blog post, but one factor they discuss is how a couple’s financial status affects divorce and financial settlements.
Divorce By Economic Class
According to the authors, people living in poverty rarely get married because they can’t afford it. Family law revolves around determining the paternity of children born to single mothers, and trying to get child support from men ill-equipped to provide it. Marriage happens in the middle class but divorce is financially difficult on both parties so couples tend to stay married even if they live apart. Only among the wealthy is marriage seen as financially advantageous, and only the wealthy have enough assets to be worth fighting over in a divorce.
What this means is today’s family law practices have to find creative and flexible ways to handle divorce, particularly among middle class clients who may not be able to afford to split up.
Creative Divorce Settlements
As sad as divorce can be, it is often the best solution for people who have grown apart. It is a preferable solution for children, who are typically better off than they would be living in a home haunted by a toxic marriage. However what about those couples who don’t have the income or the savings to split up?
Family law attorneys are seeing more clients today who need innovative divorce settlements. These practices need divorce financial software that does more than simply divide the assets by two, and plug a few numbers into alimony and child support equations. They need to be able to explore all kinds of property and support scenarios and compare them to find out which would be best for the couple.
Divorce Financials is an ideal tool for those kinds of creative settlements. Attorneys can quickly total up all assets and liabilities and consider multiple property settlement scenarios. They can try different support scenarios, and then compare them side by side and optimize them to minimize the tax impact.
As circumstances change, businesses have to change with them. The growing income inequality in this country is shaping the future of marriage and divorce. Your firm needs the foresight to adapt, and divorce settlement software like Divorce Financials that can transform as your practice does.
