I got divorced in the 2010s and it kicked me out of the housing market. I’d be five years from paying off my home now, but had to sell it as part of the separation. We bought it for $210K in 2009, sold for $225k in 2011. It flipped during the pandemic for $900k, as an “investment opportunity for GTA-area landlords looking for rental income”

That’s hard to watch, not just the money, but also seeing the trees I planted with my then-young kids cut down because the landlord needed another parking spot.

Since then, I’ve watched house prices accelerate away from me, so much so that I decided to just give up and bank everything into education savings for my kids in hopes that I’ll have a couch to sleep on in my old age. Even now that’s looking unlikely.

My now-spouse had it worse: when she divorced, she got to keep half of her then-husband’s previously-secret and significant debts, which more than wiped out any equity she had, putting her tens of thousands of dollars into the red. He, of course, got his debt halved.

I don’t doubt for a second the stats that tout rising domestic abuse rates since people become house-locked. I got divorced when rent was at least reasonable where I live. Now? Now the choice is between “a miserable, if not right dangerous, marriage” and “sleeping in a tent in a public park”.