Leaving the Marital Home

One's marriage - regardless of whether it turns out to be a boon or bane down the years - is something one never forgets.

When you get married, you embark on a new journey. You have very high hopes and expectations from it, and for good reason. As soon as you utter the sacred vow of "until death do us apart," your life as well as that of your partner converge and merge with each other. From then onward, it is expected of both of you to share a single roof and bed as long as the relationship lasts.

Your finances become one, too, and you pool resources to buy some assets for the family that can make life comfortable. One of the biggest and most important of these assets is the marital home. Acquiring one's own home is the ultimate dream of any married couple. However, it is a tough task.

The property rates are sky-high. For ordinary middle-class people, buying even a small two-bedroom apartment requires decades of savings and financial discipline. This is very difficult as a variety of expenses - medical treatment, education of children, holidays and travel, career setbacks - have to be met as one journeys through life. The only realistic chance for most couples to acquire a property of their own is to go for a mortgage and pay its cost over the years in monthly instalments.

The family home is a very important place for all its members. This is their refuge from the trials and tribulations of the world outside. Home is the small, comfortable and secure nest to which everyone returns in the evening after a hard day's work to recharge their batteries and emerge re-energised the next morning, ready to face new challenges that life may throw at them.

When a marriage is on the rocks and the partners decide to divorce, it destroys this arrangement. Divorce entails settling many issues with full finality, including child custody, division of marital property among the partners and maintenance rights. When the family assets are separated and divided, it settles the fate of the family home too. The partner who does not get the home is forced to move out and seek rented accommodation. This can give rise to many problems, financial as well as emotional.

Physical Hardships

Leaving the family house is like uprooting yourself from something around which your whole life revolved for so many years. It involves physical hardships, which are exacerbated when the mother has to move out with her children. First of all, one has to go through newspaper classifieds or talk to some property consultants. It involves checking out many properties that suit your tastes and budget.

If you have to move out of the family home in a hurry, you do not have even that luxury and have to shift without being too fussy or choosy. You have to then get your belongings professionally packed, load them into a truck and move bag and baggage to the new house. This is a big hassle for anyone.

Financial Hardships

Renting out a house is not easy on anyone's budget. It easily constitutes the biggest chunk of your monthly expenses. Your spending power reduces drastically. Many people have to postpone buying decisions and maintain a strict financial discipline. It is a financial setback as you find that you are unable to maintain the lifestyle you have been used to for so many years. Many mothers with children who do not have a good earning potential slip below poverty line as they are unable to meet expenses after paying rent.

Emotional Hardships

Leaving the family home can result in immense emotional problems. Humans are territorial by nature. They become emotionally attached to a particular location that they call their home. Getting uprooted from there and moving to a new location are jarring to them emotionally and they feel out of place. Leaving family home has the same effect.

Over the years, you make a lot of effort to build up and furnish the house according to your own tastes and comfort. Shifting to a new place also makes you as well as your children feel distant from the circle of friends you have made in the neighbourhood. Many people go into depression in new homes and miss the familiar atmosphere of their old family home where they used to stay together with their entire family and neighbourhood that they had got to know so well.