The guy who taught me how to practice divorce law represented several very high profile women in Mississippi. I don’t know if my work with him is the reason or if it is something else, but I have always helped a slightly higher percentage of women than I do men. Each person and life circumstance is unique, but the one recurring theme is their promise to me they will never get married again. When they say this, I just knowingly smile. “I’ll tell you what, I bet you one hundred dollars you will be remarried in the next five years.”
“No way, Craig. You’re crazy. I’ll take that bet.”
I win every time.
In fact, I am presenting divorce papers tomorrow for a beautiful, professional woman. I made the bet with her. She emailed me this morning:
Hey, Craig. Such a weight has been lifted in the last couple of weeks. Not having the divorce stress play in the background has been such a relief. I am concentrating better at work and just feel light. Thank you for everything you have done. I am looking forward to the closure tomorrow of having it finalized. If all goes well, I might even have a coffee date on Saturday!
Good things ahead.
Thank you for helping me travel through the bad.
I love those types of emails and I love collecting my winnings. (Some of you out there who may be reading this need to pay up.) What they don’t know that I do is the median time between a divorce and a remarriage is 3.5 years, and of all divorced people over the age of 25, 44% of women have remarried. Five years after divorce, 58% of women have remarried and ten years after divorce, 68% of women at age 25 or older at the time of their divorce have remarried. Remarriage rates are higher in the South than in other parts of the country.
Believe it or not, the likelihood a client will remarry is something we give some consideration when we are negotiating a divorce contract. Especially alimony. There are many types of alimony in Mississippi, but the components of all the awards are amount, duration, modifiability, taxability and terminating events such as death, remarriage or cohabitation with a romantic partner. Old school permanent, periodic alimony terminates upon remarriage. So if I am representing a woman who falls within the statistics giving her a high chance of another walk down the aisle, I will try to negotiate an alimony arrangement with that in mind. Getting her the best possible financial outcome.
Divorce sucks. No better way to say it. But there is life after divorce. Maybe even remarriage.
Craig Robertson is a divorce attorney practicing throughout Mississippi.
