Picture a retired woman sitting on her porch in an over-fifty-five community in Port Orange, looking at a husband she has been married to for forty-one years.
Imagine that she is doing math in her head; remaining years, pension survivor benefits, whether the house has enough equity that splitting it would still leave each of them with a decent place to live.
She has not said anything out loud yet. But she has been thinking about it for months; divorce. If this story sounds familiar, you are not alone. Gray divorce, sometimes called silver divorce or senior divorce, is the fastest-growing category in family law. Researchers at Bowling Green State University have shown that the divorce rate for couples over sixty-five has roughly tripled since 1990.
In Florida, where more than one in five residents is over sixty-five, the numbers are even higher than the national average. So, when you walk into our office in Daytona Beach, you do not have to explain why you are doing this at your age; we have already met many people in your situation.
Why a Gray Divorce Is Different
When a couple splits up in their thirties, the conversation is mostly about two things: the children and the finances. When a senior couple splits up, the children are grown and the income may have already stopped. The conversation becomes focused on the assets.
The assets are everything that you have built together over many years. The 401(k), the pension, the Social Security strategy, the house, the boat…all of it. Even the condo in Palm Coast that the grandkids use at Christmas and the savings account you opened in 1987 that has grown into a nice chunk of change.
Deciding how these assets are split up is the focus of a Florida gray divorce. Florida is an equitable distribution state, which doesn’t necessarily mean 50/50. A Daytona Beach gray divorce attorney can help present a case for which items are marital and which are not. They can help identify which retirement accounts have premarital roots, and examine a Social Security calculation that has thirty-five reportable years on each side. A Volusia divorce lawyer who has only dealt with younger clients may not be as helpful in this aspect.
Three Things Senior Spouses Can Get Wrong
There are three mistakes that our team has seen time and again in senior divorce cases. First, they treat the house as the prize. We understand why it can seem like the thing to fight over; you raised your children there, and you are comfortable there. However, a paid-off house in Ormond Beach or Daytona Beach is not going to pay your bills or generate income. Holding onto a property like this often means giving up retirement accounts you cannot replace.
Sometimes, keeping the house is the right move. Sometimes the best course of action is to sell it and split the equity. This answer depends entirely on what the other assets are, and how much income each of you will need over the next twenty or thirty years.
The second mistake people make is assuming the retirement accounts are simple. Retirement accounts in a Florida gray divorce often need a special court order called a Qualified Domestic Relations Order, or QDRO, to divide them without triggering tax penalties. A pension may have a survivor benefit that is worth more than a monthly check. A Roth IRA and a traditional IRA can equal the same dollar amount on paper, but have wildly different real-world value after taxes. Splitting these accounts evenly does not always mean splitting them fairly.
The third mistake we see is when clients forget about Social Security. If you were married for at least ten years, you are entitled to claim Social Security based on your former spouse’s earnings record once you turn sixty-two, even after the divorce. That right is not affected by your former spouse’s remarriage, either. Many of our senior clients don’t know this, and it is one of the most valuable pieces of information in a senior divorce.
A Word About Alimony in Long Marriages
Florida overhauled its alimony law in 2023, and the changes matter most for marriages of twenty years or more. The idea of permanent alimony, where one spouse pays support for the rest of their lives, is largely gone. Now, it has been replaced with what is referred to as durational alimony, which is capped at a percentage of the length of the marriage.
For a long marriage, that cap is generally seventy-five percent of the length of the marriage. So, if you were married for forty years, durational alimony cannot exceed thirty years. The court has discretion in unusual cases, but that is the gist.
It matters whether you are the spouse who stayed home to raise children for many years, or the spouse whose pension funded the household. You really need to sit down with a board certified Volusia divorce lawyer and hash out the numbers under the current statutes.
Mediation Matters Even More After Fifty
Here is something we tell every senior divorce client who walks through our doors; the longer the case takes, the less of your retirement is left at the end of it. A litigated divorce can take eighteen months or longer in Volusia County. Two years is not uncommon when there are valuation disputes, and every month of litigation eats into the assets that are supposed to fund the rest of your life.
A mediated gray divorce, by contrast, often resolves in three to six months. This isn’t because the issues are smaller; it’s because both spouses sit down at the same table, with their lawyers and a neutral mediator, and decide what fairness looks like for them. The Seventh Judicial Circuit requires mediation in nearly every contested case anyway, so the question is whether you mediate early or after spending a lot of extra money.
Advice From Our Experienced Team
Most senior divorce clients we meet are not from Volusia County, but have retired here. They sold the house in New Jersey, Ohio, or elsewhere and bought something in Palm Coast, New Smyrna Beach, or Daytona Beach Shores. Then, either they or their spouse decided they did not want to spend the next twenty years quite the way they had spent the last forty.
If this sounds familiar, take comfort in two things: you are not the first person to be in this position, and you have more good options than you think you do. Hire a board certified family law attorney. In Florida, that is the gold standard, and only about six percent of family lawyers qualify. Sit down with a financial planner who understands this type of divorce.
How Rice Law Firm Can Help
At Rice Law Firm, gray divorce is one of the things we do most, and it is also one of the things we care about most. Our firm is led by Paul E. Rice, Jr., a Board Certified Marital and Family Law attorney with over forty years of experience. About a decade ago, Paul began focusing his practice on divorce over fifty, and most of the spouses who walk through our doors today are in their sixties, seventies, and beyond.
We handle equitable distribution, retirement account division, QDROs, alimony, and the full range of issues that come up in a Florida gray divorce. Our team serves Daytona Beach, Ormond Beach, Port Orange, New Smyrna Beach, Palm Coast, DeLand, and the surrounding Volusia and Flagler County communities. If you are thinking about taking this step and are doing the math in your head, we would like to help you do it on paper. Reach out to schedule a confidential consultation. We will be here when you are ready.