The Covid-19 lockdown has raised tensions for many couples on the verge of getting a divorce, said advisors who specializes in divorce matters.

The temporary shutdown of courthouses has only made a bad situation worse, as many have no choice but to hunker down a bit longer with their soon-to-be ex-spouse. And with that comes money talk, where the spouse in control of the finances begins to plead poverty, said Michelle Smith, a certified divorce mediator and the CEO of Source Financial Advisors, a wealth management firm in New York City.

“I am getting a ton of calls because people need help with strategy and separating myths from reality,” said Smith, who specializes in divorce financial matters. She explained that these clients are being fed information by their spouses that are scaring them and she is helping them to see if there is manipulation of data going on, and how she can move them forward with some binding agreement in the absence of court involvement.

Her call volume, she said, has jumped 33% to 40% since February.

Smith said she has been engaging in webinars on separating fact from fiction in divorce with a Covid-19 backdrop. “The advice isn’t necessarily different. It’s just heightened right now. I like to get back to how do we get you to resolve this together,” she said.

About 90% of the calls she gets comes from people who are not in control of the finances, which in many cases are women, Smith said. “And what I see from the spouse in control of the financial situation is unnecessary scaring, controlling and manipulating,” she said.

As an example, Smith said she had a call this week from a woman who was crying hysterically because she went on Instacart to get groceries delivered, as she usually does, and found out that her husband had cut off the credit card. The husband felt she was spending too much, even though the wife reminded him that they used to spend the same amount each night when they went to a restaurant.

“She had no credit in her own name. She thought the card was in her name, but like many women who lose control of the finances in marriage, she didn’t  realize that it was an additional card on his account and he cut her off,” Smith said. “So, there is a lot of games being played.”  

She added that the moneyed spouse will say things like, ‘I can’t pay alimony,’ ‘I can’t pay child support,’ ‘my business is worth zero. “Everything they would have hoped would be an excuse, they are using again,” Smith said.

Smith said in such cases it is important to know specifics such as total assets and income. And in the case of the spouse who is claiming that his business is worth zero, he had to have taken a PPP, she said. “So, we need to see the deposit of the PPP and understand what he is doing to keep everybody employed.” she said, noting that if he is using the money in the moment to save his business, it will still have value.

“If you are a pizzeria that went out of business and you cannot reopen, then that business is worth zero.  But, if you are a law firm or an accounting firm or a small business owner, the value of your business is not measured in this micro-second of time. You look over year-over-year earnings trend and income,” she said.

“They don’t like it when the facts come to light, but I am in the business to create equitable divorce settlements, and equitable has to be fair and so I just need the facts,” Smith said.

Like Smith, Donna Cheswick also has seen her call volumes skyrocket. “I have been getting a lot more calls in the last six weeks than I probably got in two to three months,” she said. “People are just worried. They hear something from a friend or from TV and they just really are not sure."

Cheswick, a financial advisor and partner with Medallion Wealth Management Inc. in Sewickley, Pa., and the owner of Cheswick Divorce Solutions, said while the lockdown may have pushed many people who have been contemplating divorce closer to moving forward to finalize the process, the pandemic has brought undue pressure and stress on everyone. “And that only tends to impact emotional decisions as well,” she said, noting that financial stress is one of the biggest reasons why people divorce.

Cheswick said she gets a lot of calls from the disadvantaged spouse, and it is not just the wife anymore. There are a lot of husbands whose wives work and they are the lower wage earners, she said.

She pointed out that the scare tactics used by those in control of the finances have always been used in divorces, she said. “If it needs to be divided in some fashion, it still needs to be divided." Problems arise, she said, when people already negotiated some agreement before Covid-19 hit.

“A lot of my calls are more dealing with just going through some education and knowledge so that they know what to expect,” she said.

Smith said the pandemic is exposing strengths and weaknesses of everybody’s relationships. She predicted there will be a surge in divorces in January for the many people that may be thinking about it or that were on the fence.

Cheswick is not making any hard predictions, but she said, “A lot of people say nine months from now, we are either going to have a lot of divorces or a lot of babies. Probably, we are going to have both,” she said.