Lifestyle
I write about the cost of divorce. Welcome to the world of $20K retainers and lawyers charging $650 an hour.
It’s common knowledge that divorce is expensive. It’s one reason people wait so long to do it. Divorce is expensive. But how costly? And why?
Since going through my own divorce, which was finalized in November 2024, I’ve been trying to bring to light the actual numbers. Like anything related to marriage and money, people tend to be tight-lipped about how things went down. So I created The Divorce Diaries for my Substack and let women submit their answers anonymously so readers could have access to real numbers — like how much they spent in legal fees, how much they got in child support and whether they received spousal support (and for how long).
The most expensive divorce captured in my data comes from C., who spent $150,000 — and that was before she had to take her ex back to court for nonpayment of child support. (Also, note that this is just her share of the legal fees. Her ex presumably had a similar number racked up.) Most of my respondents spent in the range of $10,000 to $40,000 on their divorce. But again, my poll includes just one side of the equation. Their exes likely have similar bills — although I have noticed, in divorce as in marriage, women do most of the labor of keeping things moving and compiling reports, thus their legal bills are often higher.
Divorce lawyer Aaron Thomas, author of The Prenup Prescription, says that couples typically spend 20% of their net worth on their divorce. That means if you have a lot of money, your divorce will cost more. The more there is to fight over, the more you’ll spend on legal fees. Thomas is a proponent of the prenup for this very reason. It’s insurance for a very costly divorce.
Where you live also plays into how much you spend. I live in Silicon Valley, in one of the most expensive ZIP codes in the country. Divorce lawyers here are not cheap (mine was $650 an hour). I recently met with a local woman in the process of trying to secure a divorce lawyer. Many were fully booked. January and February are the busiest months for divorce lawyers, and she was trying to secure one in April. The lawyer she ultimately hired required a $20,000 retainer.
That’s how much I had to put down too. But hers had a particularly painful caveat. For my retainer, I paid $20K, and then the firm billed me monthly and pulled from the retainer until that supply ran dry, at which point I had to pay another $5K retainer. I did this many, many times.
But for this woman, her lawyer was planning to hold on to that retainer as a kind of insurance policy for unpaid bills. In other words, she paid $20K, and then her lawyer billed her monthly without pulling from that retainer.
It’s financial realities like these that leave so many people in unhappy marriages. Because if you require not just a retainer for a lawyer (times two!) but also a security deposit for an apartment for whoever moves out (that’s often at least one month’s rent), you are looking at a huge sum of money to just start the process of divorce. In Palo Alto, Calif., where she lives, the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment is $4,000. So let’s say her husband’s retainer was $15,000. Her retainer: $20,000. The security deposit and first month’s rent: $8,000. That’s $43,000 in the first month of separation that comes out of their bank account.
One way to cut costs is to enter into mediation with your ex. While you don’t need a lawyer in mediation, it’s often advised that each side has their own representation. But this mediator requires — you guessed it — a retainer. So expect another $10,000 to come out of your pockets in order to secure someone to help you decide how to split up your lives to avoid a lengthy, more expensive battle in court.
If there are no children involved, however, you can get divorced online. One of my respondents just paid the filing fee, so her divorce cost her a mere $200. They didn’t have children and they had been married only two years, so their split was pretty straightforward.
So what makes one divorce cost more than the next?
The more assets you have, the more expensive your divorce. Especially if said assets are complicated, such as property that needs to be appraised, a business that needs a valuation or stock options that don’t have an actual monetary value at the time of the split. For couples who have significant assets, the financial disclosures process is involved and can take a lot of time. And deciding how to split said assets can be emotionally wrought and complicated.
If there are children involved, and you disagree on a custody split. When this happens, you have to go to court, which is the most expensive way to finalize your divorce.
If there are disputes over spousal and child support. For child support, at least in California, there is a pretty straightforward equation. You input both parents’ incomes, and it spits out a support number. But more and more, our jobs are complex, and our pay structures aren’t just salary. Are there bonuses involved? Does your spouse own their own business and therefore can decrease what they pay themselves in order to lower support? What if one parent could be deemed “underemployed,” aka they have the capacity to make much more than they are? Then you can get into a situation where you are fighting about “imputed income,” and someone might request a vocational evaluation to determine a person’s earning capacity. And this is just the ways you can disagree about child support, something that is mandated by the courts. Spousal support isn’t mandated but should often be on the table if a spouse downshifted a career due to caretaking demands. But those sacrifices (which benefited the entire family system) can often be transformed into “choices” upon divorce when a spouse doesn’t want to pay spousal support. If you want to get spousal support, you have to fight for it and be prepared to go to court. All of this increases legal fees.
If you have to go to court. The reason people push mediation as a more economical way to get divorced is to avoid a lengthy, expensive court battle. Court is expensive because your lawyers must file motions and respond to motions, all racking up billable hours. Going to court also takes a long time. You may not get a court date for multiple months, sometimes close to a year. In the meantime, you can imagine the kind of disputes you and your ex are getting into while your financial lives remain up in the air. This also adds to more billable hours.
It shouldn’t be this hard to extract yourself from a marriage, and yet this is the legal system we currently have in place. However, I have spoken to many women postdivorce, and they all felt like it was worth it. The relief they experienced after exiting their marriages was immediate and allowed them to endure the indignity and cost of the divorce process.
So, yes, divorce is expensive — but for many, it’s a price they’re willing to pay.
Cindy DiTiberio is the writer of the bestselling Substack The Mother Lode, a feminist exploration of motherhood, marriage and divorce.