Author Bio: Elizabeth Roque is an in-house writer for Franklin Debt Relief. She presents information about debt relief programs, credit card debt reduction and getting out of debt on a variety of financial sites online.
When you’re considering getting divorced, there are a number of factors to consider, including the financial cost of what you’re about to do. Marriage is cheap and can be done for $100 or less, but divorce is unfortunately much more costly. Even when divorce is the right choice for you, is still usually costs an arm and a leg just to consider getting divorced. Also, there are several other factors to consider – like the emotional cost, on you, your spouse, and your children.
The Financial Costs
Getting married has always been a fairly cheap ordeal, even though you do have the option of spending much more if you’d prefer. First, consider what lacking that income will do to your standard of living, especially now that there’s only one parent to care for the children at most times. This can be a devastating blow, especially if the parent that doesn’t win custody is the one who works.
If you want to get down just to numbers, a divorce can easily cost $10,000 per spouse, and that’s if everyone plays fair game and there aren’t any arguments to settle or children to split, but even small complications can cost thousands of dollars to fix in court fees. The fact is that a divorce’s base price is completely unpredictable, and you need to be prepared to pay double or triple what you initially expect it to cost.
If you are also fighting a custody battle, add another $20,000 onto your initial thoughts. Even if you’re both agreed on how often both of you want to see your kids, sometimes one side can change their mind and continue pressing in court until they get their way.
The Emotional Costs
If you think a divorce is hard, think about it a little more. Divorce is not only emotionally draining, but emotionally training on everyone. Disillusionment of one side can be the beginnings of divorce, and even then it can be a painful roller coaster of emotions. After that, a party can begin to express satisfaction and after one party decides to divorce because of what they discovered in therapy and the like.
Once it is discovered that all parties want to divorce, children can get involved, and it can be a strain on them. Much of the time it feels like losing a parent when kids are told that their parents are separating, and the pain of that can be carried around for the rest of their lives.
Seek legal counsel when divorce is decided upon; the quicker it goes, the more time you’ll both have to recover from the ordeal.
