Member Article

‘Toyboy’ husbands pulling the plug on ‘Girl Power’ marriages

Increasing numbers of older, successful wives are being divorced by their younger husbands when the women hit middle age.

One of the country’s leading family law firms has reported that the number of such cases which it has handled over the last three years has risen by just over a third.

James Brown, a Partner in the Family department at JMW Solicitors based in Manchester, suggested that the pattern was a result of a surge in women choosing to marry younger men because they had greater confidence than their predecessors, in part due to their having made great professional strides.

However, he added that, in some cases, distress caused by their divorce was compounded by the news that their former husbands had decided to marry a woman younger than themselves.

“It is only really in the last 10 to 15 years that marriages in which the wife is the older party have become more frequent. Before that, they were quite rare contradictions of a much more familiar couple, made up of a successful man wed to a younger woman.

“In my experience over that time, many of the women marrying younger men do so when they reach their late thirties or early forties. Often they have built a career, are more confident and being able to attract a younger husband is almost an expression of ‘girl power’, for want of a better phrase.

“However, we are sadly seeing many instances in which this kind of relationship often founders as women reach middle-age. They may well be very elegant, poised and capable but are merely showing signs of ageing.

“For some men, including those who perhaps still harbour ambitions of fathering children, the age gap which hadn’t posed any issues while they were dating or even in the early years of marriage then becomes a difficulty.

“Although these cases are not as common as marriages and divorces in which men are the older of the spouses, we have seen a definite rise in such matters in recent years.”

Mr Brown said that the collapse of such age gap marriages was one reason behind the continued increase in middle-age divorces, or ‘silver splits’, as they have become known.

Figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that there were 4,306 marriages in England and Wales in 2012 involving women in the age range described by JMW and men aged between 25 and 34.

The data reveals that the age gap was not the most extreme, noting 168 cases in which men aged less than 25 wed women who were more than 40-years-old. Sixteen of those ceremonies involved brides of pension age.

Mr Brown claimed that many of the women divorced were left shattered by the collapse of marriages in which they had not regarded their husbands as “trophies”.

“In a number of cases, the women had seen their marriages end after helping their husbands progress in business or seen them have families with other women after they had split up.

“It can affect confidence to such a degree that they opt for make-overs in an effort to demonstrate that they still have the vitality which made them attractive in the first place.

“Their experiences often contrast with those of successful middle-aged men with younger wives. Even though there may also be difficulties in those sorts of relationships, some of the women involved recognise the security that they consider themselves fortunate to have.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Simon Malia .