More older Kansas Citians are divorcing, and it’s becoming big business | Opinion

More than 16 million older American adults are living by themselves, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of Census Bureau data. That translates to tens of thousands of Kansas City area residents. In addition to the community support agencies collected by the Mid-America Regional Council, many new for-profit businesses have sprung up to meet these people’s needs as they age.

One contributing factor to elder loneliness is “gray divorce,” which is a huge and growing problem in the U.S. — partly because it is such big business. Divorce rates among adults older than 65 have tripled since the 1990s, and accelerated in the past decade. Around a third of all divorces are now considered gray divorces. And the vast majority of older adults living alone — 80% — are widowed or divorced.

The corporate law firms often find these cases lucrative, of course, since older couples are more likely to be flush with money. Their lawyers charge big bucks for a divorce. This is hard to prove, but I have talked to older women about how much they were charged for their legal work. They told me they were charged more than their ex-husbands — in some cases, double. Law firms make billions of dollars every year on extraneous and unnecessary divorce fees.

The divorce lawyers typically promise their older female clients the sky, but statistically, U.S. Government Accountability Office data shows that American women’s standard of living falls by 45% after a divorce or separation at age 50 or older.

Even though women are more often behind this huge rise in gray divorce — initiating 70% or more of all such divorces, according to different studies — they are thus the biggest losers financially. Further, about a quarter of women, and more than a third of men, later say they regretted getting divorced in the first place.

The gray divorce industry is a blight on American society. It is time to put a stop to this debilitating social disease. To combat it, we need legislation that:

• Requires law firms to document that alternate resolution methods, such as marriage counseling or reconciliation, were attempted before they can initiate a court divorce.
• Requires that older male and female clients be charged the exact same fees for the same divorce.
• Allows easy off ramps along the way should the older couples reconcile and decide not to get divorced, including substantial refunds from law firms.
• Forbids law firms conducting gray divorces also to represent senior living communities, which depend disproportionally on older single women to fill almost 70% of their vacancies. It should come as no shock that cash-strapped care providers benefit from this explosion in gray divorces.

It is long past time for our federal and state governments to put a stop to the runaway increase in gray divorces, instigated or at least not discouraged by law firms, care providers and senior living communities that stand to make huge profits from this social disease.

It is truly the old-age COVID of our times.

Bruce A. Elleman recently retired as the William V. Pratt Professor of International History at the U.S. Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. His subsequent experience with gray divorce took him completely by surprise.