The Post writes that divorces among the banking set are skyrocketing as bankers and other Wall Street types get laid off. Rich times for divorce lawyers, who, I’m sure, are fattening their rolodexes as I type.
As Gothamist writes, however, “it’s hard to feel that much sympathy when the cautionary tales are about people who make more than $1 million a year and are fighting over Hamptons rentals, expensive summer camps for kids, and shopping sprees.”
A few things that are interesting:
- In one of graphics that the Post uses to illustrate their story, it’s always the wife (who seems to be the “stay-at-home” type) who initiates divorce proceedings, which, to me, maybe seems a little misogynistic.
- On the other hand, that’s the narrative thread that makes sense—after all, it doesn’t track that someone who has just been fired would want to then go out and create more instability in their life.
- Assuming that the driving force behind the spike in divorces is, in fact, women who are leaving suddenly unemployed husbands, I have to ask—what are these women thinking (assuming, as the underlying narrative suggests, that the prime motive force is economic)? If they’re leaving their husbands because their husbands can no longer support them in the manner to which they have become accustomed, then how are they themselves going to support themselves in the manner in which they have become accustomed? Not to be cynical about it or anything, but it seems highly improbable that there are a ton of high-paying jobs out there for someone with a 10-to-20 year gap in their resume. And while they may get some capital in the divorce settlement, the idea that they’ll be able to live off of alimony (notwithstanding the recent trend to move away from permanent alimony, anyway) from someone who’s unemployed seems far-fetched.
Now maybe I’m judging things too harshly; perhaps these marriages were broken before the bread-winners got fired laid-off. But if the relationships were fundamentally broken before, then that means that the only glue holding these people together was money. And staying in a marriage for the money alone….