What to consider before you divorce

published 13 January 2012

Every January I write an article telling you how to go about getting divorced. I hate it. But there is no getting away from the fact that more divorces are initiated after the Christmas holidays than at any other time of year. Christmas is grand when things are going well, hell when they're not. There is also no avoiding the fact that among the 115,000 or so divorces every year, there's no such thing as a good divorce. How can there be with children's lives, home ownership and all other possessions at stake and the misery of lost love chucked into the mix?

That said, there are ways to make your break up unpleasant rather than downright nasty. The best way is to try mediation something all divorcing couples heading for court are now obliged to consider. Mediation simply means staying out of court and trying to make a settlement in front of an independent negotiator instead. It's cheaper (around £1,000 rather than the £10,000-odd a court case will cost you); it's quicker (four or five meetings); and it should be less acrimonious. You don't even have to do it face to face: while being on speaking terms clearly makes finding out things about your partner's assets and deciding who keeps the dog easier, if you can't bear to be in the same room you can sit in separate rooms and have your mediator shuttle between you (see Thefma.co.uk for more).

However you do it, there are key things to bear in mind. The main one is how to deal with pensions. All too often the key arguments are over the family home, with women in particular fighting to keep it for the children. That's often a mistake. Why? Because they tend to sacrifice their rights to a family's other major asset: the retirement fund. You may think a larger house now will provide security later, but if you can't meet the mortgage out of your own income, odds are you'll end up selling it anyway.

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You may also think staking a claim on a spouse's pension means no clean break. But pensions can be split into two funds relatively easily as long as you're prepared to accept a valuation from the pension provider. Where a clean break is tricky is when the divorcing couple own a business. In the past, says The Times, a non-working spouse would have been paid her share via a bank loan. But with the banks now "less free" with cash, it isn't so easy. She may have to take the riskier option of taking shares and trying to cash them in later. This may be one occasion when taking a larger share of the house might just work.

Finally, think one more time before you file: research suggests a third of divorcees regret their decision within five years.

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast - but still writes for Moneyweek monthly.

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.