"In fact, the study found that women were left feeling substantially less secure than men following a divorce, with 56% of women feeling like they need to get smarter (in comparison to 39% of men), 36% feeling vulnerable (compared to 19% of men), and 29% feeling alone with family responsibilities (to 8% of men)."

Any study that measures how people feel is useless unless it provides some way to link up their feelings with reality. Were the women, in fact, less financially secure or more vulnerable than the men? (And what does 'less secure' mean, anyway?) Unless and until we know that your conclusions are not sustainable. Perhaps women just feel less secure than men in ANY circumstances.

I'm not disputing your conclusions -- just pointing out that the evidence given here doesn't support them.

I think the article places too much emphasis on superannuation and on the notion that females are unduly disadvantaged by divorce.

The reality is that upon divorce the partners need to maintain two households instead of one, and the non-custodial parent is less readily available to look afer the kids. A substantial fall in living standards is therefore inevitable for both parties.

Superannuation is only part of the picture. The biggest loser in divorce settlements is whoever brought the most assets and income into the marriage (generaly but not always the male, especially if they end up as the non-custodial parent).

The taxpayer in many cases also ends up losing, especially if the partners are of low income.

What a disgraceful piece of cant. It's not enough for Suncorp that families should be splitting and everyone worse off, it's not enough that men should be losing their homes and having them given to the ex-wife, it's not enough that men should be committing suicide in their 40s and 50s at the rate of hundreds per year, it's not enough that men in their 50s and 60s should be living on the street and that fewer men now work than had work at the height of the great depression. It's not enough that women who get those homes end up having to sell them because they really can't afford them and that taking the super that the man they have decided they don't want any more will not make any difference to that, although it will ensure that money is spent in trying to do so before the wonderful people at Suncorp foreclose on her anyway.

You disgust me. I will ensure that I never use Suncorp in any way and that I do all that I can to make known the disgraceful and venal lack of basic humanity that underpins what used to be a MUTUAL society to build wealth for the purpose of creating a family home.

Just go away and shrivel in the dirt like the horrible maggots you are.

Speaking of divorce, it has now inevitably become so common that the Australian Women's Weekly has just published a large glossy guide re how to navigate ones way through the wreckage.

Yes Daffy, and the people at Suncorp are doing their best to make sure it continues.

Apparently, according to their infographic, they're quite concerned that the average marriage is lasting 9 years before divorce, where it lasted only 7 a few years ago, before women started realising that being single isn't all it's cracked up to be and men started getting gunshy, so they're making sure that middle-class women who do manage to catch a bloke are told they have another source of spending money to ensure their lifestyle won't have to suffer if they get divorced. It's for the good of the country you know? How can our consumerist economy possibly survive if people are selfishly saving their money instead of allowing all those freshly-minted lawyers and accountants that our so-called universities have churned out in such numbers access to it by getting divorced? It's downright un-Australian!

Disgusting maggots are feeding on the corpses of once-loving relationships in banks, legal firms and government offices all over the country. It's way past time we pulled out the bugspray.

I am going through a divorce at the moment and found this really useful. Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

An excellent article.
I have emailed this article to my sister and a friend, who are both going through a painful divorce of truly awful men at present.

Luckily, their lawyers have already mentioned dividing the superannuation money.
50% of all assets is only fair.

I agree, Suse, provided there's been 50% contribution. Far too often what happens is that an already successful man marries a woman far less successful, or perhaps a woman who is on her second marriage with a child, supports her in a lifestyle far beyond what she might otherwise reasonably be able to expect and when the marriage breaks down she expects him to continue to do so.

A fair split of assets has to reflect the initial contribution of each party to the pool, the contribution of each party within the marriage and the earning capacity of each party cetera paribus. It is not reasonable, for example, for a wife to choose not to work because a husband is capable of supporting her and then to claim that she is disadvantaged because the existence of that support caused her not to work and hence to fail to contribute. On the other hand, if she doesn't work because she is caring for young children, or because the husband wishes to be seen to display his earning prowess by supporting a dependent spouse and as a result she foregoes opportunities to contribute that she might otherwise have embraced, then he should be liable for her future loss.

The fact that your friends think their husbands are "awful" is irrelevant. They chose to marry and how do we know the wives are not just as awful or worse?

That's all beside the point. The Suncorp piece is an incitement to women to seek divorce through publicising something that is already a well-known fact to lawyers. There is no public interest in doing so, since if a lawyer fails to advise his client at the time of lodging her claim for property settlement, then he is negligent. She doesn't need to have it publicised so she knows to ask him.

Maggots.

Antiseptic I think the author can write whatever she wants, whether you like it or not.
Calling her names just says more about you than her.
The truth hurts...

Actually, Suse, as a highly credentialled nursing assistant you should be well aware of the beneficial effects of housefly maggots on purulent wounds. They're great at getting rid of the pus so it doesn't interfere with the targetted application of antiseptic to kill infection.

Sadly, the screwfly maggot we're seeing here just digs itself in and attaches to a convenient vein, causing ulceration and scabbing.

No not all is fair in love and war.

There are a lot of issues that don't seem to make the agendas of some.

Antiseptic has pointed out some already and there are range of other issues. I'll bullet point some that I can think of that seem to be ignored.

- Earning level of the parties prior to the arrival of any children.
- Who's wishes were involved when one partner in the relationship either reduces their income or chooses not to advance career or skills during that period? It is sometimes a woman having little choice but to be the stay at home parent but it's my impression for many it's a strongly sought preference and the idea of their partner having that option is not one they would seriously consider.
- The impact of so called child support laws on the ability of those on the wrong side of that formula to rebuild their lives. Typically the payer but there are situations where a wealthy non-custodial parent is effectively relieved of financial responsibility for their children leaving the other party to carry all the costs.
- Gender differences in a willingness to form a relationship with someone with less income or assets than themselves. Does not apply to everyone but there are some clear differences between genders.
- If property is proportioned at settlement on the basis of perceived future earnings of the parties or the care of children at the time of the settlement the inability to revisit that if either changes later.

R0bert

My take on the disaster zone under discussion here is that it is strange that no-one seems to have picked up on the most obvious solution - which is to revalorise life-time commitment to the sexual partner with whom one has had children. This may involve serious attention to a) the rearing of boys so that they don't grown up hating women (mothers) and b) providing sex education of a vastly different kind to that currently provided.It may also involve getting high school girls to pay some serious attention to "The Rules" (vols 1 & 2) and the underlying economics of Jane Austen novels. It would be so nice to have 'the family' once more back in focus as the primary political and soci-economic unit, rather than that misbegotten creature, the "independent individual". BTW that life-time commitment mentioned above is unlikely to eventuate unless we get our teens once more back into humming such tunes as "love and marriage, love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage - you can't have one without the o-o-other!" Further to this, there is a geo-political rationale with which our 'leaders' ought to concern themselves, namely the high likelihood of cultural suicide if we pursue out current path away from norms and into 'diversity of family forms'. Numbers have a certain potency, and non-replacement levels of reproducing the next generation is not looking like a bright choice. Tony Abbot's solution may have a few rough edges to deal with (not least the way it involves the state as the financier of female fertility), but I think he has at least seen the problem. The femocrat-led war on the companionate marriage sold the great majority of women down the river.