The Big Split
“Out with the old and in with the new” isn't just a New Year's wish.
Along with packing away the holiday decorations and sweeping up the tinsel, many couples resolve to pack up their suitcases and leave their marriages in January.
In recent years, January has earned the nickname “Divorce Month” — a less appealing title than, say, National Honey Month (September).
While marital psychologists and divorce lawyers say January's more accurate description would be “I'm Starting to Research My Options Month,” they agree there is some accuracy in the nomenclature.
According to FindLaw.com, a website for free consumer-focused legal information with more than 5.1 million visits per month, searches for “divorce” and related phrases such as “family law” and “child custody” jumped 50 percent from just over 10,000 in December 2010 to nearly 16,000 in January 2011 and continued to surge in March.
Along these same lines, FindLaw.com analyzed divorce filings across the U.S. between 2008 and 2011 with Westlaw, a leading legal research database. The analysis revealed divorce filings spike in January, continue to rise and peak in late March.
Figures from Tom Holman, Butler County's deputy court administrator, bear this out.
Last year, Butler County recorded 21 divorce filings in January, 39 in February and 51 in March, the month with the most divorce filings for all of 2016.
“I think the reason it's after the holidays is that people will wait, they won't file. They are thinking, 'Let's have a nice holiday for the kids,'” said Donna Korczyk, a Cranberry Township psychologist.
Another reason was given by Nancy Miller, the director of Slippery Rock Counseling Services, who said, “Other practical reasons such as availability of court dates to file divorce proceedings are limited through the holiday season.
“However, once the New Year begins couples recognize it's time to bring order and closure to the distressed relationship and move forward with the decision to separate,” Miller said.
“And it could be that the first of the year is relevant to their lives,” Korczyk agreed. “They don't want to be in the same place next year that they are this year.”For others, the stress of in-laws, money troubles and career challenges coupled with the pressures to “be happy” during the holidays leads some men and women to cheat on their spouses during this time.Miller noted that, according to the Austin Institute, infidelity was cited as the cause for 37 percent of divorces.A study on holiday depression noted that of those who cheat on their spouses, 56 percent of men and 42 percent of women do so during the holiday season, said leading marriage therapist Bonnie Eaker Weil, Ph.D., author of “Make Up, Don't Break Up.”These affairs may trigger post-New Year's divorce filings by spouses who discover the affairs or by the cheating spouse who now wants to end the marriage.Korczyk said, “Often it's couples with problems don't know how to solve the problems that they have.“They will try ways to reverse the distance between them. More distance leads to more conflict and it becomes a downward spiral,” she said.William “Wink” Robinson of Henninger and Robinson PC, 6 W. Diamond St., whose 29-year practice is 50 percent divorce cases, said he's noticed a pattern, one that occurs just before the holidays.“There are typically not a lot of divorce filings in November and December,” Robinson said. And Holman's stats show divorce filings sliding from 41 in November to 28 in December 2016 in the county.“There is also, I noticed, not a lot of child custody issues in October, November, December,” Robinson said.“Honestly, I think a lot of it has to do with the ages of the children, if any,” he said.“They are asking 'Is the child ready to graduate from high school?' 'Will they have to change schools?'”Courtney Knox, a regional partner with the national law firm of Cordell & Cordell, which has offices in Cranberry Township, said the timing of a divorce filing has everything to do with the children.
“I think it has a lot to do with the beginning of the year. People don't want to break up the family during the holidays,” said Knox, whose family law firm specializes in protecting the rights of men in divorce and custody cases.“They might meet with a lawyer in January, and it can take some time to get the ducks in a row,” Knox said. “Plus tax refunds start to come in March, and people use the refunds to pay lawyers' fees. It makes sense that filings begin in January and peak in March.”Naturally, the course of true divorce seldom runs smooth.“What I'm seeing now that I didn't see five or 10 years ago is 'constructive separation,' where the couple has filed a divorce complaint but they are both living under the same roof,” Robinson said.“There could be two reasons for that. If there are children involved, it could be less stress,” he said.Another reason that many people delay divorce until after the holidays is related to income taxes, Knox said. Your marital status as of Dec. 31 determines whether you'll file a joint or an individual return for the prior year.Using a married-filing-separately return leaves you open to a bigger tax liability, she said.Either way, both Robinson and Knox said one shouldn't take an already miserable situation and make it worse with a contentious divorce.Robinson said a slight majority of his cases are settled amicably.“That's because Pennsylvania law is designed to accommodate a short, less expensive divorce,” he said.“You don't see a lot of 'scorched earth' clients. The more you want to scorch the earth, the more you have to pay your attorney,” he said.“The best thing to do is to sit down at an Eat'n Park and work it out on scrap paper and then come in and say, 'Here's what we agreed,'” Robinson said.“As far as amicable versus litigious divorces, my firm doesn't keep statistics, but speaking anecdotally I'd say 75 to 80 percent of cases settle amicably, especially if the divorcing couple are relatively young and childless.”Miller said mediation is an alternative option when couples are open to negotiation and willing to attempt to resolve disputes using a third party.
With mediation, both parties have control over how decisions are made and the end results.Miller added that in cases where mediation cannot fully resolve all disputed areas, another option is arbitration.Arbitration is conducted in a private forum, yet this process is similar to going to going before the judge in court. All decisions made by the arbitrator are final and difficult to contest.However, once divorce papers are filed, Knox said it is just a matter of time before the marriage is dissolved.She said a couple reconciles after filing papers five to 10 percent of the time.“Our law firm represents primarily men, but it's been my experience that when it's the woman who initiates the divorce, they are less likely to reconcile,” Knox said.
