Wife makes two times more money in divorce

Thirty-eight percent of American wives earn more than their husbands. Time for some number crunching from our data expert, Mona Chalabi, from fivethirtyeight. And she has given us this number of the week. Mona Chalabi joins us from our studios in New York. Hey, Mona. Who are these people? Are they working couples, both people employed?

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Lucy Kellaway. Report a mispronounced word. This latest addition to her vast stash of money must catapult her spouse Gregg to the very top of the global my-wife-earns-more-than-me league table. It is quite an achievement. I have no idea if the two of them like each other, but they have stuck it out for a long time. They met at school and he chucked in his job to follow her to the UK when she became head of Burberry; he seems to have spent the last eight years mainly looking after their three children, revamping their home and putting supper on the table for her when she finally staggered in on her five-inch heels. It is no longer particularly rare for women to be the main breadwinner — in the US a quarter of wives now earn more than their husbands — but what is rarer is for such a relationship to work. A book published last week by the journalist Farnoosh Torabi draws together data showing just how hard it is: high- earning women have difficulty finding a husband, and when they do, he is five times as likely to be unfaithful as other husbands. The woman will probably do more than her share of chores; though in the unusual event that he starts ironing and cooking, he is likely to end up feeling so emasculated he goes off sex. Either way, divorce beckons. The book, When She Makes More , is a depressing read that feels like a throwback to the s. If I think of my many female friends who have out-earned their husbands, a suspiciously large number are divorced. One friend complained that she no longer knew what her husband was for as he neither made much money nor showed any desire to help out at home. I know of only two sets of good friends where the woman earns more and where the marriage seems solid. In one there are no children, so the two spend their spare time being nice to each other. In the second, the man is so good at child-rearing and cooking while the woman is so hopeless around the house, that everyone seems happy. Admittedly, my friends are a tiny, undiverse sample made up of the over-privileged, over-educated overs. To get a slightly broader picture, last week I emailed FT journalists ranging from their early 20s to late 60s asking for examples of marriages in which the woman was breadwinner. The first responses were not encouraging. My ex-wife earned more than me, some said. Or my ex-husband earned less. The majority of colleagues, even very young ones, still seem to be in relationships where the man makes more.

Will I have to pay him spousal support?

Joe and his wife each used to travel a lot for work, but once they had kids, one of them had to cut back on their time away from home. She makes roughly twice what I do now. By , that figure had almost doubled, rising to 25 percent. Since then, the rise has been slower but is still on an uptick. In , 28 percent of women made more money than their husbands or cohabitating partners. Poorer adults, however, were more egalitarian, emphasizing the importance of both men and women to provide for their families, and respondents with college degrees rated ability to provide as less crucial than people with only a high school education 81 percent and 67 percent respectively. Not only does it appear that traditional expectations that men should make more have lingered, a recent U. Census Bureau report suggests couples might find it shameful when women are the breadwinners. When women were the bigger earners, both husbands and wives underreported her earnings and inflated his. In these marriages in which wives earned more, men inflated their own earnings by nearly three percentage points higher than what they reported on their tax forms, and wives reported their higher earnings as 1. Responses more dependably meshed with reality when men earned more than their female partners.

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Divorce tends to be emotionally gut-wrenching for the people who go through it not to mention wife makes two times more money in divorce around. Sure, you could bet big and lose twoo a single stock or money manager.

Or your small business could go bankrupt, taking your life savings with it. The risk that any marriage will end in divorce is about 45 percent, according to David Popenoea professor of sociology emeritus at Rutgers University. Timss chances fall to about 40 percent for first marriages and decline further for college-educated couples, people from intact families and couples who share the same religion.

Kuhlman, a New York City psychologist who runs marriage success training programs with his wife, Patricia Schell Kuhlman. He adds that the mix gets even more volatile with second marriages, when couples may have children, ingrained financial habits and savings or other assets that necessitate the discussion of a prenuptial agreement.

What follows is a list of four financial issues that ought to be near the top of the discussion list before getting married. Please add to the list in the comments of the online version of this article. Peterson started her Boston-based financial planning firm, Lantern Financialshe knew she wanted to focus her practice on young professionals.

She quickly realized that many of them could use premarital financial counseling and built a program called Harmoney around their needs. One of the first things she asks clients about is what she refers to as their financial ancestry. This can be a particularly intense discussion for people whose parents were divorced, and the stories are sometimes accompanied by tears. Peterson says. It follows naturally from the ancestry conversation, and Lantern Financial pulls credit reports and scores for its clients.

Molly Milinazzo and Scott Donovan, an engaged couple who live in the Dorchester section of Boston and are both 24 years old, were relieved to discover that their scores were within about 15 points of one another when they went through the Harmoney program in May.

Milinazzo says. Full disclosure on the credit front is useful for two reasons. If there are tijes or low credit scores that a couple can improve, there may still be time to make the fixes so that the couple can get the best rates on a loan for their first wife makes two times more money in divorce a year or two later.

But it gets tricky when both people want to take jn on. Kostis suggests, at a minimum, regular household meetings complete with Quicken or other spreadsheets so that the person ni the checks can keep the other one up to speed. With more stubborn couples, he might suggest handing the controls back and forth at the beginning of each year. Kuhlman, who explains the counseling approach he and his wife take with clients at stayhitched.

A few things that he suggests couples discuss early on: If one person is making most or all of the money, does that person get to make most or all of the financial decisions? Kostis might put it a bit more bluntly, say to a spouse of an aspiring investment banker or corporate lawyer: Are you O. He adds that people in the financial advice business often joke that they spend half their time talking mnoey money and the other half acting as marriage counselor.

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I am a woman who makes more than my husband and our situation is growing less unique by the day. In my experience, communicating our needs early and often is a great way to minimize frustration, hurt feelings and hurt pride. We all have things we look forward to, and sometimes the anticipation that comes with saving for something we want brings us as much happiness as the goal. For me, that goal is travel. This is a challenge because my husband enjoys traveling, but not as much as I. Our solution: Since my husband enjoys traveling, we share the cost, just not evenly. Most of the time, that means I pay for the elements of the trip that tend to cost the most and need to be decided in advance, like flights and hotels. I do, however, support his personal projects in other, nonfinancial ways: by contributing my time, energy and skills. Instead, he has his own short-term goals to look forward to, and he knows that I am ready to be an active participant in. Like many couples, my husband and I both share a desire to own a home. When we discuss the financial challenges we will have to overcome in order to buy a place of our own, our conversations always come down to two main goals: saving for a deposit and paying our future mortgage. We recognize that this is one of the money discussions that we will have to revisit from wife makes two times more money in divorce to time.