COVID uncoupling

While COVID-19 did not take my marriage - whose death was certainly due to a fatal pre-existing condition - it certainly infected my divorce.

When I filed for dissolution of my 18-year marriage in February 2020, I had no idea that this epidemic would not only wreak havoc on the divorce process itself (closed courts, virtual legal conferences) but also incubate new post-divorce problems. (Hello, safety concerns surrounding my ex-husband's relationship with our suddenly separated neighbor. She has three small children and a husband who is a doctor.)

Like the disease itself, there were waves of divorces during the COVID years. "In the beginning, clients came to me screaming, 'Get me out of here,'" she says. Says Jacqueline Newman, managing partner of the New York matrimonial law firm Berkman, Bottger, Newman & Schein LLP and author of The New Rules of Divorce: 12 Secrets to Protecting Your Wealth, Health, and Happiness (opens in new tab). 'People whose marriages weren't working to begin with were falling apart in droves. Courthouses were shut down; it was like the Wild West. Her advice: Of course you're panicking. It's a lot of stress. Just breathe. Wait. And they waited. The pandemic has been a very powerful and sustained surge since the pandemic began," says attorney Michael Aurit, a divorce and family mediation expert and co-founder of the Aurit Center for Divorce Mediation in Scottsdale, Arizona. But right now, this is the strongest and most sustained surge since the pandemic began."

COVID burnout aside, the main factor in this swell is that some unhappy married people are starting to feel a little more settled financially than perhaps they did last March, when the stock market plummeted and many were no longer even sure if they had jobs Orritt says. When people feel more financially stable, the divorce rate goes up," he says. When the economy is not doing so well, the divorce rate goes down."

Resolving money issues has been one of the most important and difficult issues in divorce. The pandemic has turned that issue into a head-scratching knot. In a divorce, financial issues have a huge impact on people's decisions," says Elizabeth Green Lindsay, an attorney with the Atlanta-based law firm of Davis, Matthews & Quigley and president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. 'What's going on in our business? What's going on with our business? We are using home equity to pay our mortgages. There are a lot of new valuation issues."

One solution, Newman says, is to create two divorce agreements: "This is how it is now, and this is how it will be when the world returns to normal. That way, expenses that are currently foregone (vacations, entertainment, etc.) can be credited to future alimony, and undervalued assets such as real estate in depressed urban areas can be sold when the market recovers. Negotiations will be very different. We live in two different worlds and account for two different worlds."

Divorce in today's society poses problems that go far beyond the balance sheet. Says Auritt, "I've been doing this work for a long time, and in the last 10 months I've witnessed a rise in anxiety and conflict." There are just too many unknowns about how the other parent will behave when they are with their child." The unknowns create fear."

Mask versus no mask. Social bubble vs. total isolation. Everyone has personal safety protocol preferences. An ex-husband who may not trust his ex-husband enough to take care of half of the children is bound to cause a marriage story level battle. Says Ann Robinson Lucas, divorce coach and mediator and co-founder of the Seattle Collaborative Legal Training Group, "Sometimes one parent is so sensitive that they never step out of the house and bleach all their belongings, while the other partner is more laissez-faire." For example, one of her "sensitive" clients lives with immunocompromised parents. After her ex-husband moved out of state and stayed at an Airbnb or hotel to visit his children, she demanded that they be quarantined in the basement for two weeks. 'It was a very bad idea,' Robinson-Lucas says. 'There was no precedent, no right way to do it. And it highlighted the cracks in co-parenting."

Because courts can't handle such pressing issues quickly, divorcing couples are turning to mediators like Orritt for help in setting clear rules about safety. 'Some parents have drawn up lists of those with whom they and their children can have direct contact. 'We find that these agreements, whether enforceable in court or not, are discussed in mediation and lead to more compliance.'

Of course, safety issues pertain to all aspects of life, especially children. For example, Newman's affluent clients are fighting over whether to send their children to pricey New York City private schools. In the case of the hybrid option, one parent says, "No big deal, the kids need to be social," while the other says, "There's no way I'm paying $60,000 for a child to sit in my living room." Some schools have strict safety standards to attend, and one parent says, 'I want my own love life. I want to travel to the Hamptons.' It's very cumbersome."

Parents with children in public schools don't fare as well. Says Auritt, "Home schooling is a significant shift in parenting and often requires a complete reworking of the typical custody schedule." 'Parents make temporary arrangements. There is no precedent for that, and they are doing things we would not have recommended before, such as having one weekday parent and one weekend parent. For a variety of reasons, this is not good in the long run, but for many, it is the only way to go now"

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And then there is the geographic migration inspired by the pandemic. Nervous parents, freed from their physical offices, are looking for places to hunker down. Says Newman, "It's quite common to have a situation where one parent takes the kids to a second home and one stays behind." Then they claim, "There's no way I'm taking my kids back to that COVID hive of a city." Newman's office is inundated with relocation petitions. If they move to the suburbs, will the parents who let their children zoom off to pre-COVID schools come back? What about the exes who don't want to leave their newly established happy lives far away from the other parent? 'I see this as a major post-COVID problem.

"The coronavirus complicates the already complicated details of many divorces, but it can also create potentially long-lasting positive changes.

"I think a very interesting trend will be the increase in 50-50 custody," says Newman. 'We've been moving that way as a country, and COVID is accelerating that.' Previously, the argument in favor of primary custody was that while one parent was working outside the home, the other parent was more involved in the child's daily life. With school and work away, both parents may want to cut the PB&J skin and keep it that way. 'It's a big change,' said Mr. Baker. 'It's changed my routine and I don't have to travel as much for work.'

Virtual court appearances are truly a radical innovation. And while there have been some awkward adjustments, the biggest problem, according to attorneys, is that they can no longer settle in the hallways of the courthouse, which had been the norm. Ex-lovers living apart do not have to rebuild their lives to fly to court appearances. Clients don't have to pay thousands of dollars for an attorney's unproductive time. Says Newman, "What I needed three hours to do in court the other day can be done in 24 minutes with Zoom." And Newman says, "I'm not sure I'll ever be the same. We may not be able to go back to what we used to do. [Even pre-trial reports with the judge] may always be virtual in the future."

Indeed, the pre-COVID court system was already overcrowded and judges were backed up. When everything closed down last year, divorcing couples in need of a quick resolution of their legal issues found mediation as a solution. 'People have been choosing mediation over trial for some time now. Few people want litigation - they don't want a bad divorce like their parents had. Says Robinson Lucas. 'Her collaborative law firm agrees to settle the terms of the divorce out of court, but we have a lot of cases now.'

My own COVID divorce was finalized in October (the very day Donald Trump announced he was infected with COVID) with a judge over Zoom and was fully legalized in January. It was a hell of a year, to say the least, and it was pretty surreal to see the vows we had made in person, looking into each other's eyes and holding each other's hands nearly 20 years ago, annulled by the virtuality of a computer. But it was kind of amazing.

I sat in a cozy chair next to my best friend at her house, sipping tea and chatting as we waited for the judge to appear on the screen. It took her only five minutes to pronounce us divorced, and I didn't even have to look at the box containing the face of my ex, whom I no longer recognized.

And just like that, it was over. I clicked "leave meeting" and closed my laptop. I hugged my friend and smiled. Freedom.

This story appeared in the April 2021 issue of Marie Claire.

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