Millennial divorce is here — and it's insanely expensive

Jasmine Bloemhof was starting to build a career in publicity when she got married at 23. By the time she filed for divorce, a month shy of her 31st birthday, she was a stay-at-home mom with two toddlers and a nearly $50,000 student-debt balance hanging over her head. She had no savings to speak of.

"Just seven days before filing for divorce, I had accepted a remote job as a publicist — something I was genuinely excited about," says Bloemhof, now 41 and in Los Angeles. Just as she was about to start, the agency rescinded the offer. "They said my divorce timing was not ideal, and they were concerned about my ability to service their clients while in the throes of something as turbulent as a divorce with two toddlers. I should have sued them for letting me go, but I could not imagine putting energy into that. Everything felt like it was unraveling."

As she struggled to find steady public relations work and waited for the courts to negotiate payment plans for child and spousal support, Bloemhof racked up credit card debt to cover basic necessities. She sold whatever she could rustle up that might be valuable: jewelry, shoes, designer handbags. To get around, she borrowed a car from her parents.

"The first year after my divorce, I only claimed $11,000 on my taxes," Bloemhof says. It was a far cry from the combined $150,000 she and her police officer husband had been bringing in before they had kids, when she worked full time.

On top of that, she and her ex sold the house they'd built together in Southern California, yielding $140,000, which they split down the middle. "All $70K went to my divorce lawyer," Bloemhof says. The house, she adds, "is now worth three times what we paid for it, and I am still renting."

All told, Bloemhof estimates the divorce has cost her over $100,000 in legal fees alone. "That doesn't include the lost wages from time off for court dates, or the career opportunities I had to turn down because I couldn't travel overnight or lacked backup childcare when the girls were sick," she says.

For divorced millennials like Bloemhof, the cost of separation is often just the tip of the iceberg. It's well known that millennials were slower than their predecessors to get in on the housing market, the job market, and retirement savings. Many are saddled with student debt. While the generation waited longer to get married, partly contributing to a downswing in divorces, many millennial marriages have now run their course. And those who do call it quits are left with yet another financial burden.

Millennial divorce is a different beast than what baby boomers went through. Despite far more boomers getting married and divorced by the time they were the age millennials are today (29 to 44), it wasn't as financially disruptive — the generation still managed to secure comparably greater assets, lower debts, larger savings, and jobs with more stability and better pay by their mid-30s than their millennial counterparts at about the same age, a recent study published in the American Journal of Sociology found. For millennials, the shift toward a more balanced income and gender dynamic within marriage has paradoxically resulted in pricier divorces and less sympathetic courts, with women often paying the steepest price. It's turned into such a legal and financial nightmare that some people are giving up on divorce altogether.

As millennials have waited longer to get hitched, there's also been a change in who is likely to get married at all. In a 2018 paper, the University of Maryland sociologist Philip N. Cohen not only anticipated "the coming divorce decline" but also said he found a growing share of those heading down the aisle were white Americans with college educations. While 90% of 40-year-olds with no college degree had been married at least once in 1990, Pew Research Center found, nongrads made up 59% of never-married 40-year-olds in 2021. The decision to get married had evolved from a default milestone of adulthood into a reflection of status and security — a new signifier of pampered, upper-middle-class life. That has created a new layer of challenges for millennials untying the knot.

Of the 12 divorced millennials I spoke with, all but one are white and have obtained at least some college education, all but two have degrees, and most were older than the median age for first marriages in the years they tied the knot. Most were able to buy a house while they were married, but several were locked out of the housing market post-divorce. Most had student debt. For all of them, divorce has brought on a significant financial burden.

It's no secret that being single is a lot more expensive than sharing costs with another wage-earning adult. A Pew analysis of 2023 Federal Reserve data found that 77% of partnered adults said they're doing at least OK financially, compared with 64% of unpartnered adults.

"When people get a divorce, they're cutting their net worth in half. That is going to have a drastic impact on their savings," says Kristyn Carmichael, a professional mediator, family attorney, and Certified Divorce Financial Analyst for the Couples Solutions Center in Phoenix. "In addition to that, they're doubling their expenses. Can they afford to live in the same city? Can they afford to have the same lifestyle? In a lot of cases, when they get through a divorce, the answer is no." The couples with the highest debt and fewest assets are the ones with the most to lose, Carmichael says.

Ashley Claire, a 33-year-old tech consultant in Portland, Oregon, whose five-year marriage ended 2 ½ years ago, says that when she began posting about her divorce on TikTok, she was stunned by the experiences others shared. "It was shocking to see how much people are spending to get divorced," she says.

Hugh Morris estimates that he lost between $230,000 and $300,000 over the course of his divorce last year. A 31-year-old financial advisor in North Dallas, he had been the sole earner in his marriage, which left him to cover legal fees for both sides and household bills while taking major financial hits: a $100,000 home sale loss, a split 401(k), and between $5,000 and $10,000 in credit card debt. "The loss from the divorce has been devastating," he says, "I've had to change my lifestyle — get cheaper housing, not eat out as much. My net worth is slowly recovering as well."

For some, the steep cost is deterring them from signing the papers at all. "If we got a divorce, lawyer's fees aside, I don't know how we would afford our own separate places," one of many recent Reddit posts on the subject says. Its title asks the question weighing on countless unhappily married millennials' minds: "How do people afford a divorce?"

Of course, not all millennials have the assets to fund a big divorce, even if the courts assume they do. Piper, a mom of two now in her late 30s, didn't work outside the home when she filed for divorce in her late 20s (for the sake of her safety, she asks that we use a pseudonym). Apart from monthly $300 disability payments for a mental health condition that prevented her from entering the job market, she had no income.

An unplanned pregnancy in her early 20s led to her decision to get married. But after the birth of their second daughter, she says, her now-ex-husband, a car salesman, started drinking. "Then he started gambling," Piper says, adding that he racked up debt and became violent. One day, when their daughters were roughly 2 and 5, she says, he punched a hole through her bedroom door while she and the girls stood on the other side. She says that he raised his fist to hit her and that he stopped only when he saw that their younger daughter was in her arms. Piper decided there and then that it was time to get out, she adds. Her ex's divorce lawyer covered most of the proceedings, which meant that, luckily for her, her ex carried the lion's share of the bill.

In today's family court system, non-wage-earning divorce petitioners like Piper are especially vulnerable. Despite gender disparities in household earnings and who takes on the bulk of domestic responsibilities — not to mention the prevalence of financial abuse and deception — multiple divorce attorneys told me that divorced millennials are navigating a system that presumes greater equality than is often actually the case. Though an analysis of survey data from between 2009 and 2015 found that women initiated over two-thirds of heterosexual divorces, their statistically lower earning power means they often have less financial leverage to push back against legal disputes from aggrieved spouses. As a result, custody battles and asset divisions are far more likely to get drawn out and add up in cost, while spousal support obligations are being granted far less often because of the expectation that both parties will independently be able to earn a living. Child support obligations are also on the decline: After adjusting for inflation, custodial parents received 15% less in child support in 2021 than they had 40 years earlier in 1981.

Jacqueline Newman, a managing partner at the matrimonial law firm Berkman Bottger Newman & Schein in Manhattan, points out that it's relatively common for married people to leave the workforce for various reasons, such as caring for families or dealing with a personal health issue. "When they do that, they are becoming very financially dependent," she says. "And I don't think courts are as sympathetic to it as they once were."

Ten years out of her marriage, Piper remains unable to work because of her disability and lives in government-subsidized housing with her teenage daughters, whom she has full custody of. Between disability benefits, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, and child support payments, she has about $1,800 every month to cover her rent, utilities, and basic expenses for her daughters. Fortunately, her parents and her ex-husband's parents all live nearby and chip in for clothes and school supplies.

"It makes me sound like a total bum, but I've made it work because my family has helped me," she says. "I'm really lucky that I have a supportive family around me, and my kids have people that really, really love them and care about them."

In a 2023 Experian survey, nearly half of millennial respondents said they considered themselves somewhat or very financially dependent on their parents. Several of the women I spoke with for this story told me that parental help proved vital in helping them get back on their feet post-divorce, whether that meant rent-free accommodations in the family home, supplementary cash, or an interest-free loan to help cover major costs.

"My mom was my safety net," says Crystal Smith, a 40-year-old copywriter in San Antonio who got divorced in summer 2022. "She helped me pay for my mortgage the first month after my divorce when I was truly financially on my own. I would not have been able to survive without at least knowing she was there to help if I needed it."

Smith was also a stay-at-home mom to her two daughters, now 13 and 15, for much of her marriage. "I didn't have the means to leave a bad situation for many years. It wasn't until I happened to stumble into a job that paid a solid living wage that I even got the courage to jump and ask for a divorce," she says, referring to a $70,000 yearly salary. "If I hadn't found that job, I would still be married to this day."

Even when the divorce itself isn't expensive, it adds to the other economic barriers and isolation millennials have faced.

Lacey Bradford, 38, hit a stroke of bad luck during the pandemic, which started just after she separated from her husband. Bradford, who lives near Kansas City, Kansas, had already weathered one financial catastrophe by graduating from college at the height of the Great Recession. At the time, she was happy to land a job as a social worker, but the $30,000 salary simply wasn't enough to make ends meet. She pivoted to selling cosmetics through Mary Kay and eventually ascended to the director level. By the time she separated from her husband in early 2020, she was the sole household earner, while her partner stayed at home with their 5-year-old son. Then came COVID-19 lockdowns.

"I went from running a six-figure business to having nothing, moving into some crappy little apartment that was only $775 a month, and being on food stamps," Bradford says.

Luckily, the divorce itself unfolded about as smoothly as it could — a blessing both emotionally and financially. Her ex-husband found a good job; she gave him the house they'd bought together, which he agreed to either sell or refinance within three years and then give her half the equity. They split custody right down the middle.

"We didn't even hire a lawyer," Bradford says. "I went up to the courthouse, I got the paperwork, filled it out, he signed it, I turned it in. It cost us $265." So far, her ex has held up his end of the bargain. Though Bradford is now approaching where she was prepandemic, having gotten engaged and started a life-coaching business, it's been a long road.

Thanks to the low divorce rate among millennials, many of the people I spoke with hadn't known anyone else in their peer groups to get divorced. "It's a lonely place to be, when you're one of the first of your friends to get divorced while everyone you know is in their own world, having their first or second children," says Claire, the tech consultant in Oregon. Like many young divorced people, she eventually found community on social media, but the isolation made the separation harder.

Everyone I spoke with has zero regrets about their divorces, but the impact for many was significant. In the decade since Bloemhof ended her marriage, she's started her own PR firm and reconnected with an old flame: her first kiss from high school, a divorced dad with two kids of his own. They've since married and had a child together, raising a blended brood of five.

There have been plenty of sacrifices along the way. "I've always needed to live close to where I worked and near the girls' school — which meant paying a premium to stay in Los Angeles," she says. To keep up with the cost of living, Bloemhof admits that she's depleted her retirement savings.

Bloemhof takes the long view. Money comes and goes, but she says she's living a good life: "I've had the gift of being present for nearly every moment of my daughters' lives — tending to their needs, showing up fully — and I wouldn't trade that for anything."

Kelli María Korducki is a journalist whose work focuses on work, tech, and culture. She's based in New York City.

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