Another side of divorce

When I met Jackie, she was hoping to find a job paying in the high $60,000s annually — a salary she needed because of a looming divorce and one she felt her master's degree in business might help her command. On further discussion, it became clear that the income goal had originated with her husband's attorney: Based on the current market, the attorney felt that $60,000 was a reasonable expectation for someone with an MBA. The problem? That degree was nearly 20 years old and never had been used. Jackie had gone from graduation to child-rearing.

I've always wondered about divorce statistics. The number you hear most frequently is that nearly half of all marriages end in divorce. But this count almost certainly doesn't include the ever-increasing number of domestic partnerships and same-sex couples living in committed relationships. If these relationship statistics could be tallied, would the percentages for breakups remain about the same?

As a jobs counselor, I see a disturbing number of careers derailed by failed relationships. If nearly half of the adult population is likely to be caught in this mess, that's a lot of career trauma.

Sometimes a breakup comes without notice, but more often it is the culmination of a slowly building storm. The spillover into the workplace is inevitable: What starts as a few poor-performance days quickly can turn into a nightmare of missed deadlines, unexplained absences and furtive calls to lawyers. If the worker manages to hang onto his or her job, the months after the divorce can prove just as rocky, as suddenly single partners wrestle with issues such as housing, parenting and dating again.

Nor is it uncommon for the newly divorced to leave jobs, either because they need more money or because their old lives seem less meaningful. Relocating to be near children who now live farther away can be another catalyst for job change.

Perhaps the partners facing the most severe job challenge after a breakup are those who curtailed a career for the sake of the family. Traditionally, this is the woman in a marriage that includes children. She may have swapped a career track for less-demanding jobs, or she may have quit working altogether. Less commonly, she never may have worked at all.

Although spousal maintenance awards seem less common or generous (perhaps rightly so) since women have taken stronger roles in the workplace, I still see a place for them in some divorce settlements.

If the finances allow it, I like to see payments go to the low-earning partner while he or she gets re-established in the work world. After all, one could argue that employers often offer laid-off workers severance pay, and that's in addition to one's state unemployment checks or continued access to health care benefits.

This is the point where the value of a good attorney becomes apparent, at least if the other partner has retained one.

Although I agree with not wanting to give all the assets to the lawyers, I also want the people I'm counseling to have the best team possible working on their side.

That team may need to include a career counselor, and not just after the ink on the settlement dries. That's because the partner who earned less needs an honest assessment of his or her worth in the marketplace — from someone with no stake in the answer. Otherwise, someone like Jackie can believe someone else's "enthusiasm" for her career prospects, without realizing the difficult truth she is likely to face.

If you are approaching, enduring or just finishing a breakup, make a place for career planning in your life. Whether you meet with someone you pay by the hour, with a volunteer or with an employee at a government work force center may not matter as much as the mere fact that you consider career issues at this critical juncture. Your immediate plan may boil down to concepts such as "hang on," but you'll be glad later if you can begin to build the foundations for the big picture.

As for Jackie, she soon realized that the dread she had been feeling about her job search was rooted in her intuition that she wasn't really marketable as an MBA-holder. Nor, in all honesty, was she interested in that career path anymore.

Her divorce settlement is still in process, but she is on course to a new career that she chose — without the help of opposing counsel.

- Amy Lindgren owns Prototype Career Service, a career consulting firm in St. Paul, Minn. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com or at 1071 W. Seventh St., St. Paul, MN 55102.