From divorce to debt

7 Feb

The fact that the latest official figures show that 119,589 couples got divorced in 2010 – a rise of 5,640 on the previous year – may seem an unusual thing to mention with National Marriage Week coming up.

But while Valentine’s Day in a leap year may be especially romantic, as tradition dictates it is the girls who will ask the boys to marry them, nearly a third of these marriages will end in divorce within 15 years.

The recession has put additional pressure on relationships, as the effects of debt and redundancies take their toll. Stress is a major factor, and there are few things more stressful than wondering where your next pay cheque is coming from, or how you will pay that red-letter bill.

The trouble is, when you split, you not only have to consider the division of assets, you also have to think about the division of debts – and given an increasing number of ‘hidden’ debts that partners are keeping secret from each other, there may be more to this than you might think.

Divorce is never easy, and the average debt being argued over is currently around £8,000. But there is one thing to remember if you are going through a bitter divorce – point scoring costs money, so try to refrain from the arguments.

If you find yourself in this situation, as hard as it is, you need to talk to try and sort out who owes what and how you plan to pay the money back to your creditors. Debts are owed by the person whose name they are in, so unless you have joint debts you can refuse to have anything to do with them. But if you have been involved in running them up, think about it, is that really fair?

Bitter divorce battles will drag on, and prevent you from starting your new life as quickly as you might like. You need to think about the transition period into your new life and building a clean fresh financial slate. Once all joint financial elements, such as credit cards or current accounts, have been sorted, you need to financially separate yourself from your partner via the credit reference agencies.

Try and have a clean slate and resist the temptation of loans or credit card offers that drop through the door. Starting again alone is a tough time financially, but it gets easier. So be strong, and if you were the spender in your previous relationship try not to get into bad habits again.