Divorce money statistics for women (2026)

Last updated September 4, 2026. Every figure below carries the organization that published it, the year, and a link to the page we took it from. Nothing here is estimated, rounded up, or extrapolated by us. Where a commonly repeated number turned out not to have a public source, we left it out.

The event: how many, who files, at what age

• 986,810 women divorced in the US in 2024, down from 992,677 in 2023 (National Center for Family and Marriage Research, Family Profile No. 31, 2025).
• The refined divorce rate was 14.2 in 2024, meaning 14.2 women divorcing per 1,000 married women aged 15 and over, down slightly from 14.4 in 2023 (NCFMR, 2025).
• Women initiated 69% of divorces. For unmarried couples breaking up there was no statistically significant gender difference, which is what makes the divorce figure interesting (Michael Rosenfeld, Stanford, presented at the American Sociological Association, 2015).
• 36% of divorces involved someone aged 50 or older in 2019, up from 27% in 2010 (Bowling Green State University research by Susan Brown and I-Fen Lin, reported by AARP).
• The median length of a marriage that ends in divorce reached 12 years in 2023 (DivorcePlus, 2026).

The money damage

• Women's household income falls about 41% after becoming divorced or separated at 50 or older, nearly twice the 23% drop men experience. The GAO's own sentence: "Women's income fell by 41 percent, nearly twice that of men's (23 percent)" (US Government Accountability Office, GAO-12-699, Retirement Security: Women Still Face Challenges, July 2012).
• Household assets fall about 41% for women and 39% for men after divorce or separation in the same analysis, so the gap is specifically an income gap, not an asset gap (US GAO, 2012).
• For women in households where everyone was 64 or younger, income fell 44% (US GAO, 2012).
• 46% of women said divorce brought financial surprises. Survey of 1,785 women across the United States (Worthy, Building a Financial Fresh Start, 2018).
• 3 in 10 women were not familiar with retirement savings during their marriage. Survey of 659 women (Worthy with the Association of Divorce Financial Planners, September 2019).

The process cost

• Average total attorney fees: about $11,300 per spouse. Median: about $7,000. The gap means a minority of expensive cases pulls the average up, so the typical case costs less than the headline (Martindale-Nolo Research 2019 divorce survey).
• Average attorney hourly rate: $270 in 2019 (Martindale-Nolo, 2019), and about $343 in 2025 (DivorcePlus, 2026).
• Full mediation commonly runs $3,000 to $8,000 in total, shared between two people (DivorcePlus, 2026).
• A litigated divorce commonly runs $15,000 to $30,000 per spouse (DivorcePlus, 2026).
• The average divorce took about 12 months from filing the petition to final judgment. With no contested issues it took just under 8 months; a case that went to trial took about 18 months; about 39% finished in six months or less (Martindale-Nolo Research data, reported by DivorcePlus).
• Divorce coaches commonly charge $100 to $250 an hour, with most clients spending $1,000 to $3,000 in total (DivorcePlus, 2026).
• Certified Divorce Financial Analysts commonly charge between about $120 and $500 an hour, depending on the market. Reported ranges: $120 to $250 or more (Experian), $200 to $500 (West Coast Family Mediation), $250 to $400 (San Diego Family Mediation).

What we deliberately left out

Several widely quoted divorce statistics do not survive a check. We dropped every number whose public source page we could not open and read, including a commonly cited "$2,000 to $5,000" flat fee for CDFA work and a "$99 consumer edition" price for Family Law Software, neither of which appears on the relevant public pages today. We also do not repeat the "50% of marriages end in divorce" line, because the figure people actually publish is a rate per 1,000 married women, not a lifetime probability.

Two caveats on the numbers we did keep. The GAO analysis is from 2012 and is based on the Health and Retirement Study; it remains the most cited federal measurement of the income effect of late divorce, and we have not found a newer federal replacement. The attorney fee survey is from 2019, so treat the dollar figures as a floor rather than a current quote.

Cite this page

Turn the statistics into your own numbers

Averages are useful for context and useless for decisions. These four calculators are free, need no signup, and keep nothing you type:

• Ex-Spouse Social Security Estimator
• Marital Share Estimator
• House vs. 401(k) Comparison
• Retirement Runway Calculator

Related reading: divorce after 50, the money guide, who you actually need, community property states, and equitable distribution states.

Sources: NCFMR, Bowling Green State University, Family Profile No. 31 (2025), Refined Divorce Rate in the U.S., by Krista K. Westrick-Payne · American Sociological Association (2015), Rosenfeld, Who Wants the Breakup · AARP, reporting Brown and Lin, Bowling Green State University · US GAO, GAO-12-699 (2012) · Worthy (2018) · Worthy and ADFP (2019) · Martindale-Nolo Research (2019), via DivorceNet · DivorcePlus (2026) · DivorcePlus, divorce timelines · DivorcePlus, divorce coach cost · Experian · West Coast Family Mediation · San Diego Family Mediation. All fetched and read in September 2026.