by Imonikhe Ahimie

Created on: July 20, 2010

Marriage is still one of the world’s great pastimes, but unfortunately, though not altogether surprising, so is divorce. In the United States, for instance, the 2008 statistical year saw in excess of 2.1 million marriages, i.e. about 7.1 marriages for every 1000 members of the population. The divorce stats for that year also show that for every two marriages taking place within the US, approximately one was being dissolved, i.e. 3.5 divorces for every 1000 people in the population. Although the US figures are the worst worldwide, figures from other countries are pretty dismal as well. In Australia, a third of all marriages will end up in divorce and in Sweden 40 percent. When one considers that in Sweden non-marital cohabitation is more widespread than in most other countries, and that the stats show that non married cohabiting couples may be at greater risk of breaking up than married couples, then we can see that the raw divorce stats may actually understate the true scope of the problem in Sweden.

Various studies have shown that the leading cause of dissension between married partners arise from financial issues. Further, lack of communication/understanding ranks high, if not highest, in the causes of divorce. If we assume that couples, at least most of them, do not get into marital relations with the intention of breaking up, which is not an unreasonable assumption to make, it seems logical that if the communication/understanding gap as regards finance that exists between couples could be bridged, then we would see a reduction in separation/divorce rates.

The path to a financially sound marriage ought logically to start before the knot is tied, but all too often prospective couples are so caught up in the rosy romantic atmosphere that precedes the actual knot tying that the financial implications of marriage hardly register on their minds. Ideally, finance ought to be to be discussed in great detail and quite cold-bloodedly so that each partner understands the other’s financial philosophy and how that aligns with his/her own philosophy. Tax, for instance, is an area which ought to be discussed and sorted out well before marriage. In the US, as is the case in several other jurisdictions, married folk are automatically treated as a single person for tax purposes, so that, married, a couple could find themselves with a lower after tax income than if both had remained single and lived together, for instance. There are ways to avoid these kinds of

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