Women who live in Nebraska and face the prospect of a divorce know that their lifestyles may end up seeing some changes, at least temporarily. It is always more expensive to maintain two households than one. For women who are over 50, they must also face the fact that they have less working years ahead of them than their younger counterparts, so there is less time to regain lost assets.
Yahoo Finance recently reported some of the results from research conducted at Bowling Green State University that indicates women who get divorced in their 50s or later experience a much higher rate of poverty by the time they are 62 than do any other group. For these women, the poverty rate was found to be 26.9%.
For a person, female or male, who was divorced before they turned 50, the poverty rate was a mere 3.1%. Men over 62 who experienced a gray divorce and who never remarried had a stated poverty rate of 11.4%. Even women who divorced before 50 had higher poverty rates than these groups at 18.6%, highlighting the serious risks women face when divorcing.
The standard of living for gray divorced women was found to drop by as much as 45% compared to 21% for gray divorced men. Men who divorced before 50 experienced little to no decline in their living standard. Women who divorced before 50 had a lifestyle dip about half as much as their gray divorced counterparts. Women may want to seek guidance from an attorney during a divorce to understand how to protect their financial futures.