The loudspeaker announced my number barely 10 minutes after I arrived for my appointment.
“R718? R718 report to booth number four.”
Even though I am a few years away from retirement, I was at my local Social Security office on a fact-finding expedition. I needed to prepare for the lawsuit my ex-husband threatened to launch because he was reaching “a reasonable retirement age” and wanted to end his alimony obligation to me.
I was married for 30 years when I filed for divorce at the age of 53. The challenges of becoming a single person were, of course, staggering. When I first contemplated separation, I had visions of being a bag lady, eating cat food and begging for money at the corner of Conference Drive and Rivergate Parkway.
After all, I spent most of my married years as an at-home mother or working part-time to accommodate my ex’s demanding career schedule and my children’s needs. My career aspirations (i.e., earning potential) were on hold during that important time frame.
Those fears kept me in a marriage I wanted to leave long before I made the move. We were part of what has been coined the Gray Divorce Revolution — those of us in marriages of 20 years or longer, who decided to pack it in. Baby Boomers are the leaders in divorce rates in America. Now, apparently, I may be inducted into a new group: older divorced women who are one of the highest growing-poverty or near-poverty demographics in the United States.
My ex-husband had already sent me two emails that I ignored. He wanted me to simply agree to his plan to end alimony. I receive alimony in futuro — a type of support reserved and granted for divorce in cases resulting in a “relative economic disadvantage” due to the inequity created by a long-term marriage. This permanent alimony is only revokable for death, living with a third party, remarriage, or if the terms are contested at retirement age and the judge deems that a change of circumstances would be an undue hardship to maintain the support. This would be the second such lawsuit in less than 10 years since we divorced. He lost the last one. I needed to know the numbers in case he actually solicited a petition this time.
A nameless, clean-cut man in a short-sleeved blue plaid shirt sat behind the desk in the Plexiglass booth number four. It was strange how these cubicles appeared similar to the phone booth partitions in a prison, or some gas station cashier’s booth — the kind worried about the risk of robbery — with only a slot at the bottom just big enough to slide papers under. This one, however, did not have any apparent device to aid in speaking. The irony was inescapable, with such a contrast between the stark institutional environment and the life-altering business decisions being made here across these desks.
Plexiglass man spoke in hushed tones as he laid out the facts. “There is no way you can catch up to your ex-husband’s Social Security earned benefit,” he said.
“You will have to draw on his record to supplement your own primary insurance amount. It’s your best bet. So, let’s see,” he studied the screen, “you are entitled to half of his earned credit, so we are looking at your $1,200 plus the additional $400 from his, to make $1,600.00 a month in spousal benefits when you reach the age of 67.”
“What?” I did the math and realized it came to only $19,200 per year. “That’s all? I thought I would receive the equivalent of his,” I asked.
“Oh, that’s a common misconception. If he were to die before you, God forbid, then you would be entitled to the full death benefit amount,” the man responded.
“God forbid,” I parroted back. With my multiple sclerosis and hairy cell leukemia, that is doubtful, but one could hope? The truth is, if he were patient and just paid what I consider to be earned income, after all, my homemaking made his life’s work possible, fate might just rid him of this alimony commitment. My life expectancy is equivocal, at best — hairy cell is an incurable blood cancer. He could appear to be the good guy, and I would at least have a fighting chance. The cost of litigation easily cancels out his financial obligation.
“Fuuuc…” I said under my breath as reality banged around in my brain. I have only a minimal employee retirement savings, as my ex kept most of those funds while I retained the house in our marital dissolution agreement. I will definitely require alimony to survive.
This is when the tears seeped out despite my best efforts to maintain my composure as I stared hard into the eyes of the Plexiglass man.
He was clearly uncomfortable with being the conveyor of such news and averted his gaze. I guess this is why the barrier is there — so shocked and disoriented people keening in despair don’t jump over the desk.
“I knew I would be at a disadvantage, being an at-home mom all those years…” My voice stopped working. I dabbed my eyes, back-handed my nose, which was also leaking at this point, and then grabbed a Kleenex from my purse.
Uncomfortable with the silence that followed, he said, “You should be so proud you stayed home with your kids.” Like they would be my best retirement plan. “I am glad women get this provision now. My grandmother was in the same boat,” he added.
I was a bit insulted that he compared me to his grandmother, but more importantly, I left that appointment shivering inside out — the unhoused bag lady anxiety was back.
Based on my mother — my only female example — I had good reason to be apprehensive. She divorced my father in 1973, riding on the second wave of feminist achievements: the invention of the birth control pill and the no-fault divorce made it possible for women to leave unhappy and abusive marriages. But many women like her also paid the unexpected costs, and she was plunged into poverty. Child support was not enforced, and alimony was rarely granted in those days. We ate potted meat, blood-red hot dogs, and government cheese while she trained to become an administrative assistant to support herself and her five children as a single head-of-household living in a mobile home in a trailer park.
Mom worked for almost two decades after her divorce, but could not financially make up for the years she spent as a housewife. The low-paying jobs she had while married — cleaner, waitress and such — counteracted her higher income as an administrative assistant. She ended up grossing $575.00 a month from social security, despite the fact that she could have drawn against my father’s social security allotment for more than double that amount. For her, it wasn’t only a point of pride and separation from him, but it was also her symbol of freedom and independence. Living simply and frugally on her own earnings was more important to her.
Maybe that is why she made a point of giving me a hundred-dollar bill every Christmas when I was a young mother. “This is just for you,” she would say. I kept the money as long as I could, but inevitably I would spend it on an “emergency”— a kid’s field trip, new shoes, etc. Still, I cherished this bit of independence in an otherwise codependent marital relationship.
I have worked too hard to have a different life or a better outcome than she did. I did not want to end up like her.
Don’t misunderstand: I admired and respected my mom and her devotion to her children, including the care she took of two of my adult brothers. One, who was incapacitated by a heart attack and stroke, outlived her by five years, and the other was dying of liver disease. Fierce like a feral cat, she advocated for them… right up until death. When my brother died, not of liver disease but in a house fire, part of her died with him.
Mom had a hard life, but she never complained, at least not to me. I think that is why she died so young at age 73 from hemolytic anemia. She was weary.
As she lay on her hospice bed, I told her, “I love you, Mom.”
“I’m too tired for love,” she replied.
Death was her escape.
I understand her statement much better now, some 12 years later. Sometimes it is safer not to feel. The bombardment of too many traumas demands a soul to shut down. Unconditional love is exhausting to maintain.
In the decade since the judge banged his gavel pronouncing me “restored to all the rights and privileges of an unmarried person,” I have earned a Master of Fine Arts in writing, secured gainful employment teaching college-level composition, and navigated the care and keeping of the house and the car.
What was unaddressed by my attorney or the judge was how this very choice to divorce after being an at-home mother of three and the sole cheerleader for my husband’s career carried the added penalty of social insecurity in retirement.
I soon discovered my situation isn’t unique. According to the Biden-Harris “Economic Security of Older Women” study released in September 2024, women still experience persistent and accumulating workplace inequities throughout their lives: lower pay compared to their male counterparts, fewer employer-sponsored benefits, unpaid caregiving responsibilities, etc. We earn less and pay less into the entitlement funds.
“These factors disproportionately disadvantage widows, divorced women, and older women of color,” the study found. The poverty rate for divorced women 65 years and older is over 19%, well above their married counterparts at 12%. This means they are living on a yearly income of $15,650 or less. With the increase in the gray divorce numbers, it makes sense that there is a coinciding increase in the number of women living in poverty.
My recent trip to the Social Security Administration office confirmed this inevitability. Despite working to increase my earnings with multiple promotions and erasing the zero-income lines from my work record, my marriage and divorce created lasting financial inequalities. My wage projections — even if I add in the modest and taxed alimony income — aren’t technically in the poverty range, but it is meager. Retirement, especially in the Trump economy, looks doubtful. Luckily, I have a few more years to prepare.
Until the United States truly values stay-at-home mothers by instituting congressional action and not just spouting pro-life/pro-family lip service, women are going to continue to suffer a lifetime of financial disparity. For starters, childcare tax credits, like the ones we grant folks who pay for daycare, could easily apply to stay-at-home moms. We could also provide caregiver credits for years spent working at home rearing children on women’s social security tallies, like European countries have done for decades.
Lately, whenever young mothers ask me about staying home with my children, I admit that I’m not sure it was worth the sacrifice. I never thought I would feel this way. I’ve been quite pompous about my choice, feeling superior to those “bad moms” who worked outside the home, missed their children’s “firsts,” and relied on us to do the room mothering and carpooling.
I caution these women not to anticipate misfortune, but to take a proactive approach: limit those years at home, pay into their own IRAs, or devise a plan with their spouses to mitigate the financial penalties. That way, if they happen to fall out of love, or as my mother said, grow “too tired for love,” and make that impossible mental health choice to leave, it will not bankrupt them for the rest of their lives.
In truth, most families, like mine, with shoestring budgets are simply unable to do this. We never know what the future holds — whether it’s a happy marriage, a divorce or a life-threatening illness — so we women have to take care of ourselves... too. This is the essence of gender equality.
Catherine Berresheim’s work appears in The Autoethnographer ManifestStation, the Nashville Scene, and ”Chicken Soup for the Soul: Lessons Learned From My Cat” (2023) among others. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Spalding University’s Naslund-Mann Graduate School of Writing. Berresheim lives in the greater Metropolitan Nashville area, where she is a tenured associate professor and freelance writer.
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