We were too busy building a life together to think to check. It's fair to assume there's a system that helps families navigate housing, income, healthcare, and childcare if things ever change. There isn't one. We think two people who loved each other enough to build a family deserve better than that gap.
Intellectually we know a separation means two homes, not one, and that means more costs. But we rarely process just how much money that actually is.
It's two rents or two mortgages, paid on half the income. Most other costs of living, cars, clothes, bills, food, holidays, effectively double. Income doesn't.
Custody might be split 50:50, but there is nearly always a primary caregiver who does more of the parenting. That role costs real income. They can't work the hours the other parent can, because someone has to run the household day to day.
Without enough income behind it, a settlement's asset split doesn't hold. Assets decline. Wealth declines. Financial stress grows with age.
Primary caregivers deserve financial security in retirement. The system doesn't deliver that. It accidentally delivers the opposite.