Simple Divorce Papers

There is an article in last week’s Globe and Mail written by Kerry Gold entitled “Divorce stokes the condo boom“. It deals with how divorce has become an important part of the market for real estate agents. The author quotes one real estate agent explaining just how lucrative the divorce market can be:

“There was a time in the summer I kept spinning my head around in circles because the phone would be ringing every day and it would be somebody splitting up and they would want me to sell their place and find them two others.”

There were a few interesting observations made in the article I want to comment on. First, one agent interviewed observed that the market would be even bigger except that some people stay together simply because they do not want to down-size their home to a smaller one or an apartment. So, they stay together just to enjoy the benefits of the economies of scale: the old saying that two can live more cheaply than one. (That’s actually not true of course, two people living together can live more cheaply than two people living independently but not as cheaply as a single independent person.)

This observation brings to mind the rule about when a couple is considered to have separated. If a couple continues to reside together for economic reasons but otherwise ends their marriage relationship, they can consider themselves to be separated.

In the case of Brown v. Brown the Ontario Superior Court of Justice decided that the couple had separated on January 1, 2004 even though the evidence showed that they had not separated until September 1, 2005. Why? Because the parties had agreed that they had actually ended their marriage relationship with no reasonable possibility of reconciliation on the earlier date even though they had continued to live in the same house together until September 2005.

The other observation is based on the report of one agent that he is “currently helping a divorced couple find separate homes. But, so amicable is their split, they are viewing the same properties together.”

This goes to the enormous advantage, not only financially but perhaps even more significantly, emotionally, that couples can benefit from if they can keep their separation or divorce amicable, or at least collaborative rather than hotly contested.