“June is bustin’ out all over,” the old Rodgers and Hammerstein song tells us, and escorting its arrival are dozens of weddings, for, as another old show tune explains, “Oh, they say when you marry in June / You’re a bride all your life. And the bridegroom who marries in June / Gets a sweetheart for a wife.”

Sadly, the month of June doesn’t quite ward off divorce the way we might hope. In 2023, Pew Research found that 1 in 3 ever-married Americans have been divorced, meaning that at least some of those June brides and grooms likely didn’t make it “until death us do part.”

Spousal Separation Is Not the Only Negative Outcome of Divorce

While divorce may be less prevalent than it once was, it’s still an unfortunate reality of today’s society. A spouse is unhappy, unfulfilled, or restless, so he or she seeks a divorce in hopes of curing his or her woes. Rational people know intuitively that this is false; what we often don’t realize, however, is just how much worse divorce makes our lives, particularly on the financial front.

Businessman and TV personality Kevin O’Leary recently raised this point during an interview. According to O’Leary, divorce is a flat-out dumb mistake for couples to make because it not only invites government intrusion into their lives, but it also creates a major financial setback from which they may never recover:

Every time you get divorced you pay the woman that you divorced – or man – and you pay the government a third, often, through capital gains and liquidation because you can’t separate all the assets without liquidating them sometimes. So you’ve got the government sitting there, you’ve got the other spouse sitting there – this is the stupidest thing you could ever do. … Because you are going to wipe out up to two-thirds of your wealth.

Given those numbers, O’Leary implies, you had better have a really, really good reason for divorce – at least something other than being somewhat unhappy and discontent.

O’Leary is not the only one to acknowledge the fact that major income loss comes with divorce. According to a 2025 report from the U.S. Census Bureau, which tracks household income for mothers, divorce causes average household income to fall from around $90,000 to $42,000. “While income gradually recovers over time, reaching $60,000 after ten years, it remains roughly 30% below its pre-divorce level a decade after divorce,” the report explains.

Money Talks

Many of us don’t like to consider the moral and ethical effects of divorce – what it will do to a couple’s children, whether it’s okay to break a vow made before God, etc. But, for better or for worse, money talks. And if moral or ethical issues don’t convince a couple to remain together, they should at least consider the reality that they’re likely consigning themselves to a lifetime of financial struggles if they choose to divorce for any of the many capricious reasons that inspire divorce today.

Like O’Leary, American founder James Wilson also recognized how silly it was for couples to divorce solely on the grounds of unhappiness. But Wilson went deeper than just the financial fallout of divorce for individual couples.

“When divorces can be summoned to the aid of levity, of vanity, or of avarice, a state of marriage becomes frequently a state of war or stratagem,” Wilson wrote. In other words, divorces pursued for trivial reasons such as unhappiness cause a nation to self-destruct from within.

“Such was the case in ancient Rome,” Wilson continues. “‘Passion, interest, or caprice,’ says the Historian of her falling state, ‘suggested daily motives for the dissolution of marriage; a word, a sign, a message, the mandate of a freeman declared the separation; the most tender of human connexions was degraded to a transient society of profit or pleasure.’”

Wilson then quotes Cicero, who said, “The first bond of society is marriage, the next, our children.”

It’s easy to get testy when someone suggests that divorce is dangerous and damaging, particularly since it’s an issue that hits a little too close to home for many Americans. “It’s my life!” people say. “I can live it how I want.”

That’s true. But when it comes to divorce, we should recognize that such a choice will likely mean that those same people will be living their lives with far less wealth … while also contributing to the internal destruction of the nation in the process.

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This article was made possible by The Fred & Rheta Skelton Center for Cultural Renewal, a project of 1819 News.

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