Is your spouse a toxic asset?

SEATTLE -- Taylor Young drives a Lexus, wears $200 Cosabella bras and has a body by Pilates. Then her husband loses his job, and the family is forced out of their fancy Yarrow Point home.

It’s a prescient story and a fictional one. “Mrs. Perfect,” a novel set in the wealthy Seattle suburbs, came out nearly a year ago, and it’s left a lot of folks wondering whether author Jane Porter had a crystal ball.

“People kept thinking I knew something,” Porter said.

The recession has left real-life Mrs. Perfects more anxious than ever about the state of their unions. The mood among many married women in her Eastside circle is one of “quiet desperation,” she said.

“One woman, I would’ve never thought, she said she’d do anything to make the marriage work,” Porter said.

She’s worried that if she became a single parent, her kids wouldn’t be able to go to private school or do their activities.

“It wasn’t even about her lifestyle, it was the kids,’” she said.

And while tough economic times bind some couples together, Bellevue financial planner Rachele Cawaring said she has more clients than ever who are going through divorce. 

For the wealthy, Cawaring said, there’s “the other side, where people are thinking, ‘I’m the breadwinner, and my income is low,  maybe its a cheaper way for me to get a divorce.’”

Time to cash out?

When one’s net worth is lower, on paper there’s less to lose in a split. But not everyone who wants to cash out of their marriage can afford to.

Porter said a number of women in her area have said to her, “quietly, or privately, 'I’m not happy, but I couldn’t afford a divorce.' ”

 “If his net worth has crashed,” Porter points out, “there’s no half to take.”

The state’s divorce statistics lag behind economic activity. In 2007, about 25,000 divorces occurred, according to the Washington State Department of Health. In the years prior to that, the total number of divorces remained relatively stable. It’s hard to tell if the sagging economy will have an impact on the state’s divorce rate.

Thomas Hamerlinck, a Bellevue lawyer who has handled divorces of pro musicians and athletes, doesn’t expect it will. Hamerlinck believes some people who otherwise might’ve considered about getting a divorce and divvying assets might be less inclined to do so in this economic environment.

Who gets the house?

Downturns in the economy make it more difficult to divide assets, he said.

For example, most people will need to sell a house to facilitate a property settlement.

“When the real estate market is stone cold, they [parties in a divorce] don’t have the cash, “Hamerlinck said.  “They don’t want to have to worry about paying the carrying cost of the house pending sale.”

He’s heard of cases where couples argue about who has to take the house, rather than who gets to take it.

On the other hand, splitting up a business could be a boon for some.

When people have a closely held business that may have been valued at a high value, “in certain perspectives it’s good because the person gets the business interest awarded at relatively low price over historical value,” Hamerlinck said.

Clients who view their spouses as extravagant spenders often consider divorce to be “good long-term financial planning,” he added.

However, getting divorced requires “facing up to the reality of your financial situation,” Hamerlinck said – something he believes  many are loathe to do at the moment.

 “I think there is right now, a subset of people that are probably sitting on the sidelines, thinking it would be easier to get a divorce without compounding the pain of having seen my 401k shrink by 50 percent.”

Demand for divorce won’t stay pent-up indefinitely.

If things don’t rebound, Hamerlinck said, “Eventually people will say, ‘That’s the new reality, and I’m unhappy in my marriage.’”