Are you an older divorcee who's afraid of becoming a bag lady?
The most frightening aspect of divorce is financial—it throws families, mostly of women and children, into poverty. The group most affected, and ignored, is us older women. My worst fear was of becoming a bag lady, wandering around with all my possessions in a shopping cart, sleeping in doorways.
I am 65 and my ex husband is 14 years younger than me. When we were married I assumed my freelance writing income and his job would be sufficient to support us. We lived comfortably by augmenting his income with an inheritance from my mother, while he stashed away money in his retirement account. He dumped me for another—of course much younger-- woman, kept the retirement account and gave me the house but I have to pay the mortage. The support he gives me doesn’t quite cover it and it ended when I was 65. I got too depressed after he left to keep pitching magazine articles and my freelance careeer went down the tubes.
There is no more lifelong alimony for women my lawyer informs me—we are supposed to support ourselves at some point. The problem is that we older women don’t have the career opportunities younger women have. By the time our support ends, we won’t be back on our feet—we'll be lucky to have a roof over our heads.
The court assumes that Social Security will take over when I’m 65. . Of course social security will barely cover my mortgage. When I asked for more money in court his lawyer says I can go work at Walmart and support myself. Gee, that wasn’t exactly what I had in mind for my old age. Luckily I still had a little of my inheritance left so I renovated the basement and rented it out. I cleared out the garage and rented that too. I'm about to rent out a couple more rooms. Being a landlady wasn't what I had in mind for my old age, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
How are you suriviving?.
