Can I afford to get divorced?

The bill people are least ready for is not the lawyer. It is that the same income now has to run two of almost everything, permanently. Put your own numbers in and see the gap. Nothing you type leaves your browser, and nothing is saved.

Read this before you trust the number

The multipliers below are assumptions, not findings. We have not measured them and we are not going to pretend we have. Each one has a reason written next to it and a slider you can move, and the output is only ever as good as what you put in. Use it to see the shape of the problem, not to plan to the dollar.

What each month costs, before and after

Start with what you spend now, as one household. Then move each slider to say how much of that cost survives being split in two. The default positions are explained line by line, and every one of them is arguable.

Cost, per month now
Now
What happens to it
Two homes
Rent or mortgage, plus tax and HOATwo homes instead of one. Each is usually smaller than the one you have now, which is why this is not a flat 200 percent – but two smaller homes cost more than one larger one almost everywhere, because you pay twice for the roof, not for the square footage.
Power, water, gasA second home has its own standing charges, its own minimum bills, and its own heating. Usage per person falls a little. The fixed part does not fall at all.
Internet, phones, streamingTwo internet lines, two routers, and the family phone plan loses its multi-line discount. Streaming is where people quietly pay twice without noticing for months.
Groceries and household suppliesThe one category that barely changes, because the same people eat the same amount. What does rise is waste and duplicate staples – two of every condiment, two of every spice.
Cars, fuel, insurance, transitOften a second car where one was shared, and always more driving: handovers, two sets of school runs, two routes to work. Car insurance also loses its multi-car discount.
Health insurance and medicalThis one depends entirely on whose plan the family was on. If a spouse was covered on the other one plan, that cover ends and has to be bought. See the COBRA page below.
Childcare, school and activitiesMostly unchanged, because the children are the same children. It rises where care has to cover two locations, or where a schedule needs paid help it did not need before.
Home or renters, life, other insuranceTwo policies where there was one, and renters cover on a new place is new money.
Everything else – clothes, pets, personal, debtThe category that catches what nobody budgets: a second set of school clothes, a second lot of furniture that wears out, and the small duplicated things that add up.
One household, nowPer month, from your figures
Two householdsPer month, both homes together
The gapExtra, every month, that did not exist before
Over a yearThe gap, twelve times

And the money to open the second door

Separate from the monthly gap, and due first. This is the number that decides whether somebody can leave in March or has to wait until August.

One-off, to open the second home
Amount
Deposit, first and last monthAlmost always the largest single number, and almost always due before anything else has settled.
Moving costsTruck, help, storage, the overlap month.
Furnishing the second homeBeds, a table, a sofa, pots, a shower curtain. People consistently underestimate this by a factor of two or three.
A second set of everything for the childrenBeds, clothes, chargers, the specific stuffed animal. The alternative is a child living out of a bag between two homes, which is its own cost.
Deposits and connection fees for utilitiesPower, water, internet. Higher if credit has taken a knock, which it often has.
To set up the second homeOne-off, before the first monthly bill arrives

The same money, two homes

Combined take-home pay, per monthBoth of you, after tax. The point of this line is that it is the same number before and after, which is exactly the problem.

The thing no order can fix

Child support and alimony move money from one column to the other. They do not create any. If the two homes together cost more than the household earns, an order decides who carries the shortfall, not whether there is one. That is why two people can both be telling the truth when one says the payment is unaffordable and the other says it is not enough.

What this page deliberately leaves out

Legal fees, because they have their own page and they are one-off. Tax changes, because filing status, the child tax credit and head of household can move the answer by thousands and depend on facts we do not have. And the cost of the house itself – whether to sell, whether either of you can qualify alone – which is a separate decision.

Built 31 August 2026. The arithmetic is yours; the multipliers are assumptions we have labeled as assumptions. If you think one of the defaults is badly wrong, tell us and say why and we will change it.

If you want to talk it through

Help with the house sets out the four things that can happen to it — a buyout, a deferred sale, a sale now, or the court deciding — and when it is too early to call an agent at all.

Disclosure: Hyleri Katzenberg · Compass — licensed real estate salesperson in Connecticut and Florida, and the person who writes this site. If you ask for an introduction to an agent elsewhere, she receives a referral fee from that agent, paid out of their commission and never added to what you pay. Nothing else on The Cusp works this way — nobody pays to be in the directory. How we make money.

If you want a name

We can introduce you to an agent who has done this kind of sale before — someone who knows what an automatic order does to a listing, and how to work a sale where the two owners are not speaking. There is no cost for the conversation and no obligation.

Ask for an introduction to an agent → — who we would introduce you to, what the referral fee is and who pays it, and why the answer is sometimes that you should not sell at all.

Keep reading

Sources last checked2 September 2026
Page published2 September 2026
What this means. This is when the sources on this page were last read against their originals — statutes, court rules, official schedules — taken from the date this page was built from its sources. It is not the date the page was last edited. Adding a link or fixing a typo does not move it; re-reading the statute does. Law changes without notice, so treat anything time-sensitive as needing a fresh check. Where we get something wrong we publish it at thecusp.app/corrections with the date, what changed, and how long the error was live.