The Impact of a Gray Divorce on Adult Children

Some months back, my colleague Andrea Vacca, a collaborative divorce professional, wrote about the financial implications of gray divorce (divorcing over age 50). She referenced an article in Forbes that discussed the many areas of life that are affected by gray divorce, including the impact on adult children. Regardless of age, divorce often draws adult children away from their progress into finding their own identities, careers, and love, and back into the family dynamic.

The Forbes article highlighted the rates of gray divorce — increasing from 10% of divorces to the current figure of 25% of divorces. This is the only age group in which divorce rates have increased from 2005-2015. Financial challenges, like handling retirement benefits, survivorship assets, and health insurance were explored, in addition to the difficulties for adult children — who can be put in a situation of confidante for one or both of their parents, despite having their own families, careers, and lives.

Similar to what can happen with young children, adult children may feel forced to take sides, and worry about feeling disloyal if they don’t. Sometimes this is all compounded by parents sharing intimate details about their marriage with their grown children.

Gray divorce may impact visitation with grandchildren — an additional burden for the adult children to manage on top of busy schedules and lives.

Society assumes that adult children are less impacted by divorce; but this is far from the truth, especially if the divorcing parents are in conflict. Family routines, rituals, and holidays are impacted. And so, providing support for, and to, this population is important.

In my next article, I will share some information about the newly launched Adult Children of Divorce committee through FamilyKind, an organization devoted to providing affordable non-adversarial resources to protect children of divorce. This particular committee is tasked with creating supportive services for adult children of divorce. You can read more about our committee and services here.