Divorce is Financially Difficult
Mar 10, 2024
I don't know how many times when I worked at the bank and was faced with people who are going through a marriage dissolution. It really was not until I went through my own divorce, that I realized just how hard it was for them. And truly, I do not even think I went through half of what I heard at the bank from my clients.
First, I didn't have kids with my previous marriage and second, I was already familiar with the financial industry, so therefore I knew a lot of things already. I really cannot imagine going through a divorce not knowing the things I already knew.
A divorce is already something that people are not proud of going through, and to walk into a bank and to tell your story, you almost feel either judged, or feel like you need to earn some advocates. I found that people were already walking into the bank, feeling vulnerable because most people came with the thought in mind that they needed sound advice, but to add a divorce in there, especially when both parties of the couple, were both clients of the same bank, it is humbling and mostly embarrassing.
I was with a man for four years and we lived together, we shared our finances. He moved into the home that I called my first home that I bought when I saved enough of a down payment, a couple years before meeting him.
In 2007, we sold that house and saw huge profit because the real estate market was hot back then, the value in my condo had basically tripled.
Everything that I had earned from that house equity, we had paid off his debts, my debts and we had married in the same year. And eight months later, I had asked for divorce.
This is not about the divorce, it's about what had happened financially. Even though we had sold my condo for a lot of money, we also bought our next home for a lot of money. And then the real estate market bubble burst, and I left my marriage and our house $40K in the hole because I was not able to leave unless I was willing to pay him out the difference in the equity in our home.
What was important for me, was that I wanted to continue living my life truly being happy: I was with the wrong person the first time and I learned from that. Now being with the right person, allows me to feel truly safe. We share everything because we are equal, and I do not mean monetarily, I mean in every way. We treat everything as ours. My success is his success and vice versa. I had to learn the hard way how to look at what an equal relationship should look like. I am glad I did.