It's just inheretly complicated to seperate the financial life of two people again. You owned everything together, and now suddenly you have to decide who gets what.

And they are often one-sided because at marriage you signed that you'd care for your partner financially. If you break up then that duty doesn't immediately stop. Maybe one partner stopped their career to care for mutual kids and is now has financially much worse prospects than if they never had married.

Speaking from my personal experience, one reason is that one party can unilaterally make it complicated by not working in good faith to get it finished. That often results in imbalanced outcomes because the other party either gives in or runs out of money for legal fees.

Divorce laws can be complex, and what they say can often seem unfair to one party or other, especially from within the emotional heat of a broken relationship. Some things that can seem unfair, but really aren't:

• "Wait, they get the kids, AND I have to pay them? I want my kids!". Child support payments are payments to support the child - it is fair that they go to the parent who the child lives with more, and it is fair that they come from the parent who earned more - though this can certainly seem unfair.
• "I earned that money! Why should they get a share?" The law regards married people as equal partners in a relationship. If one partner quits work to look after the kids, and that means the other can focus on their career, then it is perfectly fair to share the finances equally - or even force the earning partner to provide spousal support while the non-working partner tries the difficult task of getting back into the workforce after a 15 year break - though this can certainly seem unfair.

Divorces are more expensive, and take more lawyer time, when the parties disagree. Since their marriage just broke down, they often are not in the mood to agree on anything much. There'll be a lot of anger and hurt. In the end, both parties will have to agree on something that feels satisfactory to neither, and it can take time to accept that and let the lawyers just do their job. If one partner rants for half an hour to their lawyer about how bad and unreasonable the other partner is, there's no reason the lawyer should not be paid for that time, but yes, it is a waste of money.

If they come before the court and say "here's what we've agreed," that's a lot cheaper than paying a judge, bailiff and both legal teams for the time to argue why the house should be divided 40/60 instead of 50/50. But agreeing beforehand on a painful (for both parties) compromise can be difficult.

You’ve spent years buying goods and possibly property with another person. Now you are splitting and those goods and property need to be divided. How do you divide it? And what if the other person wants more than you think they should get? Together you bought all your furniture and you both REALLY want to keep the living room set you bought together. That’s why it’s complicated.

And good divorce attorneys cost a lot because they are good at arguing why their client should be entitled to more for a wide variety of reasons, and end up getting their clients more than they would have without them.

> If they come before the court and say "here's what we've agreed," that's a lot cheaper than paying a judge, bailiff and both legal teams for the time to argue why the house should be divided 40/60 instead of 50/50.

Yeah, I had to go to court about ten years ago, and there were a lot of uncontested divorce hearings. They took about a minute each. The most interesting one was where one party had to attend by phone, because at least that meant needing to set up the phone call and a notary in another state who obviously wasn't as familiar with my state's divorce laws as the judge.

Because people that are going through a separation are often completely unreasonable and simply want to hurt the other person.

In the end, all they do is to cost themselves far more in lawyer fees than if they’d just been reasonable in the first place.

Because the dad wants to look like he's interested in the kids, but all he cares about are the finances.

There'll be selection bias going on here - it's generally the divorces that are complicated or contentious that you'll hear about, and not the ones that are relatively simple.

Divorce is expensive as for complications that will depend on the people contesting it if you can agree on everything and simply want a divorce makes it a lot cheaper and easier but if your arguing over everything then it will drag on and the solicitors are the ultimate winners..... I've been divorced once and separated over 13 years from the present wife.

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