When my father died, several folks in my parents’ church started hinting at how nice it would be if she an a specific widower were to become involved. The resisted and didn’t start seeing each other until 2 years later, after the initial push had died. They ended up marrying soon after that.
My former boss had that issue. He was careful with his money, after an early divorce he had only his 2 sons to worry about. When he was going to retire, he decided to marry the woman he was “seeing” since benefits accrued to a spouse. (Same thing my brother did before he retired) However, she was far less responsible financially. Plus, being a bit older, he was worried she might be taken for a ride by a subsequent spouse; He wasn’t worried that her two children would also get part of the inheritance, just that they or someone might persuade her to cut his kids out of their fair share. The house was paid off, so that was a major asset of the marriage and would only be saleable when she died too.
In the end, all they could do is put a non-binding letter along with the will stating that intent that all 4 children share equally. He couldn’t legally force her to not reneg on that. it wasn’t a showstopper issue, they both agreed.
I read somewhere once that in old age homes, women greatly outnumber men - so no surprise in the geriatric age group that men find it easier to acquire companionship. As for those widow(er)ed early, I wonder how much the statistics would vary compared to divorced spouses? The only drawback is that some people might be less inclined to take on raising someone e;se’s children?
The soon-to-be husband could easily have ensured his kids couldn’t be disinherited if he died before his wife-to-be died. But it would have taken creating a trust.
Some folks are allergic to doing jobs the right way, and especially if it costs a few bucks. So they give it a lick and a promise instead Sometimes that works, and sometimes it doesn’t.
Now that is an interesting question.
Widowed or divorced, if the participants are in their 20s-40s there are probably kids to be dealt with. Maybe even two sets of them. So although with-kids or without-kids might affect remarriage rates I don’t see that affecting divorced folks vs widowed folks differentially.
As mentioned above, I’m widowered 2+ years ago. My current wife was divorced 20+ years ago. So we have one of each in our house. :eek:
Unlike me, she dated for a long time and said in her experience, and what she’s read online, and talked to friends about … Both divorced and widowered guys have issues and challenges as a prospective partner; they’re just different issues. And the same doubtless applies to men looking at a previously married woman and her issues.
My suspicion, having listened to a lot of men divorcing stories, is that the typical divorcee (M or F) has developed a real hate for the general attributes of the opposite sex. Which any prospective BF/GF has to overcome. What do they say, “remarriage is the triumph of hope over experience”?
But a widow/er doesn’t have that hate. Instead they’ve got a rose-colored late spouse they still idealize at least some and who serves as a standard of comparison the prospective BF/GF has to both match and exceed.
That wasn’t all he could do - he could have put the house into a trust or transferred it to some or all of the kids while retaining the right to live there for himself and his wife until their deaths and there are probably additional ways. Now, every method has different pros and cons, and maybe he didn’t want to transfer it to the kids now because he didn’t want to give up control or wanted to be able to change his mind later about whether her kids will inherit . Or because he wanted his wife to be able to sell it if she wanted to (I’m not sure how it would only be saleable when if she died other than a trust or a life estate). You can’t always achieve everything you want to * but if you only have one goal, there are multiple ways to achieve it.
This is just going to be a guess- but everyone I know who was divorced in their 20s or 30s, male or female, kids or no kids has ended up in at least one long-term committed relationship ( I actually know two people who have been married 3 times and had at least one LTR in addition tot he marriages - talk about “hope over experience”). Same for people I know who were widowed in their 20s or 30s. On the other hand, the older the person was when they were widowed , the less likely the women are to remarry. I don’t know any women who were over 50 when they were widowed who remarried or entered into another LTR -but the men are another story , I cannot think of a single widower I know who didn’t end up in another relationship , not even the ones widowed in their 70s.
* My mother wanted to 1) Leave her house to my sister, and not transfer ownership while my mother was still alive. 2) Make sure my sister didn’t need a mortgage to buy the rest of us out. 3) Not basically disinherit the other three of us. No way for her to achieve all three goals. She could sell my sister the house now and have her pay the rest of us after mom died. Or she could leave the four of us the house and my sister would have to buy us out to be the sole owner ( if we agreed). Or she could leave the house to my sister and basically disinherit the other three.
I know over-50 widows who remarried, and widowers who never remarried, but that’s probably because I’m old enough to do a lot of socializing with elderly people. It is true that the older a woman is when she’s widowed the less likely she is to re-marry. And old widowers seem to re-marry more often than old widows for reasons already given.
“Hate” is too strong a word in my case, but “complete distrust with a fair amount of disdain” would be closer to the mark.
My ex-wife and I divorced in early 2020, and my last relationship ended about a year ago. Both these experiences have definitely soured me on the whole “relationship” thing. And the women I’ve met in the past 12 months or so are close to convincing me that ending up alone might actually be the better outcome.
Yes, a trust is what my brother-in-law did; but his house was worth over $3M and I assume there were other commensurate assets and a bunch of red tape over capital gains for a sale in the USA. (The trust paid the house expenses for the half-dozen years she survived him and lived there). Not sure how worthwhile it is to create a trust for a normal suburban house in Canada that might be worth, give or take, $300,000 and without assets to maintain the house. I know some provinces have rules about the family home, although I didn’t see either as sophisticated or litiginous.
As for remarriage, Canada has a court decision that once a person has put themselves in a postion of loco parentis for a time (6 months) they cannot arbitrarily sever that relationship with the child - at least, financially. The more rabid men’s rights types will suggest a woman could shck up with one guy after another for 6 months or more and accumulate multiple ex-partners liable for child support. (Although the only person I know of paying support for someone e;se’s children was because he adopted them when he married what became his ex, and the divorce a decade later was earned on both sides.)
Good point. But he found one he could live with. I must say she was a real find.
Thanks, all, for the responses. I agree that the enormous number of “extra” women past the age of 65 or so plays an important role in the relative unlikelihood of women remarrying after widowhood. Beyond that, lots of possibilities.
I can relate, from the other side of the gender divide, to @Broomstick’s comment about what happens when you care long-term for a spouse with significant medical issues. That’s certainly one of the reasons why I haven’t jumped back into the dating pool–it’s kind of nice not to be needed.
On the other hand, this situation doesn’t deter all widow(er)s from looking for someone new. My cousin is in a serious relationship with a man in his late fifties who lost his wife to cancer. Less than a year after her death he was on dating sites. From all I’ve heard, the guy and his late wife had a very fine marriage. I’m sure there are other examples.
Unlike some of you, I do know a pretty fair number of widows who have remarried, including several who were 70+ at the time. I don’t think I know an unusually large number of women; maybe I do! And I also know a few widowers who did not remarry, or pretty clearly will not do so, including a couple under 70. Anecdata is always interesting.
Of course, I put this in Factual Questions in hopes that we’d be able to determine the legitimacy of the stats given in the OP: within two years, 85% of widowers and 5% of widows are in a committed relationship or married. We haven’t done that! I did some more digging and am no closer to a definitive answer than I was earlier. However, for those who are interested, here are a few conclusions:
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I haven’t searched exhaustively, but have not found any support for the 85%/5% figure in the Hax chat, or anything very close to it.
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There are a lot of studies that frame the question a little differently. For example, a recent study determined that the “average widow or widower wait[s] one year, three months, and two weeks to have sex with a new partner” [love the specificity, but I was hoping for days, hours, and minutes too–hey, if you’re gonna be granular, be GRANULAR, dammit]. Obviously, having sex is not the same as being in a committed relationship, but it’s interesting to put studies like this into the hopper.
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There are two studies that are cited multiple times and do ask the question more or less the way it was answered in the chat.
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A 2007 study in Canada (which looked at people 45 and older only) says that after 3 years the figures are 17% for widowers and less than 3% for widows–this includes cohabiting in addition to marriage, but not the rather amorphous “committed relationship” terminology–and after ten years it’s 29% and 7%.
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An American study from the 1990s, which does not seem to have an age barrier, gives 61% within two years (25 months, actually) for men and 19% for women. That does count “involved in a new romance.” This is the most cited study as far as I can tell, but that of course does not imply that it is the most accurate.
So, no true clarity here! I guess you’re welcome to take whichever one you want, or split the difference. But in the interest of fighting ignorance, I think we can agree it’s not a good idea to go around spouting the chat participant’s 85%/5% figure. A good reminder that anyone can make up a statistic…
Thanks again.