\n<\/p>\n
Going through a divorce as a wife?<\/strong><\/p>\n The financial hit from divorce isn\u2019t evenly split. Among women approaching or already in retirement, household income drops an average of 41 percent after a divorce, almost twice the decline men see, according to a Government Accountability Office report to the Senate Special Committee on Aging.<\/strong><\/p>\n Older divorces are where the asset question becomes most pronounced. The divorce rate among adults 50 and over climbed from 3.9 per 1,000 married women in 1990 to about 11 by 2008, and it has held near that level since, according to Pew Research Center. <\/strong><\/p>\n Women initiated 69 percent of divorces in a Stanford study of heterosexual couples by sociologist Michael Rosenfeld. What a wife is entitled to in a divorce<\/a> comes down to the couple\u2019s finances and the law of the state they are in.<\/strong><\/p>\n The study found that women are more likely than men to initiate divorce, but it did not conclude that women receive greater financial or legal benefits. Instead, what a wife is entitled to in a divorce depends on the couple\u2019s financial circumstances and the applicable state law.<\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s no one national rule on what a wife gets in a divorce since property division rules are set state by state. The states of Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin follow a community property system. <\/strong><\/p>\n Under this system, most income and assets gathered during the marriage are treated like they\u2019re jointly owned from the start. The other 41 states, plus Washington, D.C., use equitable distribution. In equitable distribution states, a judge divides marital property based on what seems fair, not on a rigid formula. <\/strong><\/p>\n Still, even within the community property category, things don\u2019t look the same everywhere. In some jurisdictions, the default feels like a strict 50\/50 split, while in others the judge gets extra leeway to move away from that division if needed.<\/strong><\/p>\nIt Depends Entirely on the State<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n
Classifying the Property Comes First<\/b><\/span><\/h3>\n