The market rate for mine would appear to be in the $50,000 – $60,00 range.
In the next installment, I’ll walk you through how I came to that conclusion. But first, what could possibly bring a person to decide it needed figuring in the first place? Separation Agreements, that’s what. Specifically, __ __ __.
A thought experiment: if your significant other offered you $10,000 to divorce them, would you want to? What about for twenty? (I hear one asshole in the back shouting he’d pay out $10k himself.) Take my wife. Please!
What do the amounts we’d offer, accept, and reject say about our relationships? That a spouse would agree to such a deal (at nearly any price) in the first place? And what does it say about me that I’m participating in all this, metaphor though it may be?
Even in a thought experiment, it’s hard to quantify, and there’s no accounting for the intangibles — the things upon which no supposed price may be hung (eg one’s health) though you can bet your kidneys the insurance adjuster does it every day.
Even though money issues are partly what brought us to this point, it is of course by no means purely financial. It seems only fair to say that we both want to be divorced, and the amount and direction of money exchanged doesn’t necessarily seem to be about who wants it more.
But it’s interesting to think about.