Regardless of how Americans like to pretend that they try as hard as they can to stave off divorce proceedings because they respect the institution and dread the psychic consequence, a good number of husbands and wives make the best of loveless marriage for no nobler reason than a terror of the inevitable costs that accompany even the simplest dissolution of wedded bonds. Above and beyond any concerns about proper dispensation of assets, though, the typical spouse should quite rightly be most concerned with splitting any credit card debt burdens or other unsecured accounts to ensure that they're only held responsible for the appropriate share while limiting the damage to credit scores that so often follows a trip to divorce court. No matter how amicable your trial separation may have been nor how dearly you trust your mate, the formal end of a marriage has a funny way of bringing out the worst in people and inspiring thoughts of mutually assured destruction that burn far brighter than dutiful obligations to honor the spirit of a debt settlement agreement.
For most of the past century, the common perception held that the breadwinner (most often the men even today, though the discrepancy's swiftly disappearing) would bear the financial brunt of any divorce. The stereotype can largely be traced to the California state community property laws directing presiding trustees throughout our show business capital to summarily halve the fortunes of entertainers and creative professionals, and the resultant film and television portrayals of the unfairly dispossessed heads of household largely ignored the often disastrous financial consequences of divorce upon partners who neglected higher education and career ambitions while tending to domestic areas. Looking back through the cinematic record to try and discern past attitudes toward severing a marital union, it's easy to believe that only the wealthy would even think about filing for divorce.
To a certain degree, the comparative focus on well heeled couples within pop cultural treatment of divorce could be explained away through Hollywood's eternal preoccupation with the love affairs of our richest one percent, but, until the rise of women's rights and simultaneous elimination of archaic local nuisance laws forever changed the fundamental concept of marriage over the last generation, even wives comfortably nestled in the middle class honestly did seem to believe that they could not afford to leave their spouse no matter how abusive or disliked. While instituting true equality of the sexes may be outside the realm of legislators, the incidence of alimony payments sent from women to men has exponentially risen, and, for better or worse, only a slight percentage of American couples find it fiscally advisable to subside on just a single income.
Of course, soon to be ex wives newly saddled with a full share of their rather more profligate spouses' Visa bills might occasionally fantasize about a vanished age of chivalry, but, if they fail to avoid bankruptcy because of ill prepared credit card debt relief plans, they've only themselves to blame. Despite the appreciable temptation to hurtle through the process and thereby minimize emotional pain, even couples that only ever took one another for poorer must still emphasize caution and think through every step of the final dance with a former life-mate. As eager as you may be to put the marriage behind you, slow down and scrutinize every debt relief strategy (with help of professional counsel, ideaaly) or else run the risk of crippling any fresh start with interest bearing baggage.
