Years Later, Divorce Complicates Caregiving

By Paula Span

My friend Diane Fener, an attorney in Virginia Beach, Va., maintains a busy schedule when she travels to New England to see her parents.

“I make the circuit,” she said. She visits her mother, who for two years has lived in the dementia unit of an assisted living facility in Rhode Island. She visits her father in his apartment about a half-hour away in Massachusetts. And his second wife, Ms. Fener’s stepmother, in a nearby nursing home; she, too, has dementia. And the man who was her mother’s second husband for nearly 20 years.

“Four stops,” Ms. Fener said. “I don’t get as much time with each of them as I’d like.”

This is the aftermath of a spike in the divorce rate that struck in the 1970s. States liberalized their divorce laws, working women became less inclined to remain in unsatisfying marriages, the cultural stigma of divorce faded — and 30 years later, the grown children of these broken marriages are dealing with the unanticipated consequences.

“It adds another layer of complexity to an already complex and emotional situation,” said Suzanne Mintz, president of the National Family Caregivers Association.

U.S. Census Bureau data shows how much more common this scenario has become than in decades past. In 1960, about 4 percent of people over 60 were currently divorced or separated; by 2000, the proportion had climbed to more than 9 percent of men and 10 percent of women.

A higher proportion of the 60-plus population is currently married now, in part because lengthening lifespans mean that fewer become widowed (PDF). But many of those are second or third marriages, according to census data: among men over 50 who’d ever been divorced, almost 56 percent were married in 2004, as were 40 percent of ever-divorced women.

Which can create some thorny situations.

Years after parents split, their children may wind up helping to sustain two households instead of one, and those households can be across town or across the country. Further, unmarried women (whether single, widowed or divorced) face significantly higher poverty rates in middle and old age, according to a study by the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (PDF) that AARP published last year.

Diane Fener and her sister and brothers each contribute money to support their mother and father. “I don’t resent any of it,” she said, “but if they hadn’t gotten divorced, their budgets wouldn’t be as strained.” Neither would their offspring’s.

With remarriages, moreover, the cast of characters increases. Children may find themselves caring for three or four older people instead of one or two, dealing with several sets of doctors, social workers, accountants and attorneys. And with stepsiblings, sometimes a squadron of them.

“There are more people to share some of the burden, but also more people to negotiate with,” said Xenia Montenegro, author of an AARP report on midlife divorce (PDF). “You may have more sources of support, or more sources of conflict.”

Consider my friend Linda Engelhardt, a New Jersey photo stylist, who has spent much of the past year coping with four elderly people, aged 80 to 89, all with serious health problems. As the child geographically closest to both her father, who died in March, and stepmother in Westchester County, N.Y., and to her mother and stepfather in New Jersey, she’s often the caregiver on the scene. But nine other children — her own three siblings, her stepmother’s three kids and her stepfather’s three — voice opinions, ask favors, get involved in decisions.

Sometimes it all works reasonably well. When Ms. Englehardt’s mother and stepfather were both hospitalized, she was in frequent touch with a stepsister in Connecticut. But now, after a subsequent dispute, they haven’t spoken in six months. “I was there for her when her dad was in need, but when I needed help for my mother, she wouldn’t get involved,” Ms. Englehardt said. “It’s a strange situation.”

Here’s another: Diane Fener’s divorced parents, both 88, for years were so at odds that they couldn’t be seated together at their grandchildren’s birthday parties. Recently, though, they’ve become close again. He visits her regularly; she recognizes and trusts him. After years of Alzheimer’s disease, Ms. Fener said, “She was gradually forgetting more and more. And somewhere in there, she forgot she was sore at him.”