In 1967, the Beatles famously sang: “Send me a postcard, drop me a line, stating point of view, indicate precisely what you mean to say, yours sincerely, wasting away, give me your answer, fill in a form, mine for evermore, will you still need me, will you still feed me when I’m sixty-four?” Fifty-four years later, in 2021, with the “baby boom” generation, its predecessors and successors, retired and retiring, and dying at an ever accelerating rate, accompanied by the realization that lifespans in the United States (and elsewhere) oftentimes extend to ages ranging from the late 80’s through people’s 90’s and beyond into the 110’s, it seems to many observers that older Americans, spurred on by the lockdowns resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, are divorcing at a much higher rate than most people had anticipated.

For those attorneys practicing in the fields of matrimonial and family law this requires a modification of their approach to resolving their clients’ matters in ways that those clients had not envisioned when they determined that “life is too short” to spend it with someone whom they no longer love, find interesting, deem attractive, perceive as abrasive, too old, lacking in vigor, unadventurous, stodgy, humorless, set in their ways, need a caretaker or nurse, etc. The fact is that many of those clients have come to learn that they did not truly understand what was in store for them when they uttered those words, “for better or worse, in sickness and in health, until death do us part.”

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