The Demise of the 'Bennifer' Marriage - The Odds Were Never In Their Favor -What We Can Learn About Divorce From Their Breakup

Exactly two years after the date of their marriage Jennifer Lopez filed for divorce from Ben Affleck. It was a symbolic gesture specifically chosen by Jennifer to announce her disappointment, hurt and anger over another failed marriage. However, when viewed from the prism of divorce statistics their marriage was doomed from the start. Contrary to the greeting given by Effie Trinket in the movie "The Hunger Games" ("May the Odds Be Ever In Your Favor"), here, the odds were never in their favor. In fact, the odds were severely stacked up against them. Apart from witnessing their personal tragedy what can we learn from their breakup about the subject of divorce?

Some time ago I wrote a five-part series on some of the core factors or stressors which increase the chances of divorce. Jennifer and Ben came to this marriage with many of the key divorce risk factors discussed by me in that five- part series. Let us take a look at this matrix to see where and how it all went wrong.

In the first instance, their current marriage was their second attempt to create an exclusive, loving and long-lasting relationship. The couple first met when working on a movie in 2002. After she divorced her then husband in 2003, Jen and Ben went public with their relationship and ultimately became engaged. However, just days before their scheduled wedding in September of 2003, the couple called it off and then announced their breakup four months later. Both of them then went on to wed different spouses.

Given this traumatic near miss and their entanglements with the "new love of their lives" one would think that they were really done with each other. However, as I have seen in my divorce practice some people are never really done, even to the point of remarrying the person they have just divorced.

As I have said on other occasions, remarriage is the triumph of hope over experience. But taking up again with the person you have previously and famously dumped at the altar is the triumph of delusion over reason. Ignoring the most basic laws of chance and probability, twenty years after their initial breakup Ben and Jennifer resurrected the idea of marriage in 2022. Thus, a failed prior relationship between them was strike one.

The next risk factor at play was the multiple prior marriages that each of them has had. Jennifer's marriage to Ben is her fourth and for Ben it is his second marriage. The number of previous marriages is one of the most critical divorce risk factors. The nationwide divorce rate is approximately 50% of all marriages. But this statistic is reserved for first marriages. It is even higher for second marriages. Approximately, 60% of second marriages end in divorce. Moreover, approximately 73% of third marriages end in divorce. Thus, Jennifer's three prior marriages and divorces put her in the ultra-risk category, with Ben only slightly less at risk.

Another divorce risk factor, one not as well known, is the amount of money spent on the engagement ring and the wedding.  In a recent study by two distinguished professors, Andrew Francis and Hugo Mialon, they concluded that the more a couple spends on the engagement ring and the wedding the higher the probability of a future divorce.

What they found is that for each jump in the cost of the wedding the divorce rate shot up. Once the couple goes over $20,000 they are 3.5 times more likely to split. Similarly, the amount paid for the engagement ring also has a significant influence on the likelihood of divorce. Spending less than $1,000 on the engagement ring actually reduces the hazard of divorce. However, as the price of the ring goes up so does the likelihood of divorce. Spending more than $20,000 on that diamond ring increases the hazard of divorce by 3.5 times.

Once again, Ben and Jennifer checked all of the negative boxes. Ben actually gave Jennifer three engagement rings (a collective 23 carats) for which he spent approximately six million dollars. As to the cost of the wedding there were actually two ceremonies. In July of 2022 the couple surprisingly and secretly tied the knot in a small Las Vegas chapel (thereby improving their odds of making it by spending a modest amount of money on the wedding ceremony), only to ruin their chances of a happily-ever-after by hosting a second wedding ceremony on August 20, 2022 at Ben's family 87-acre estate in Georgia - a lavish affair complete with A-list guests, thousands of dollars of flowers, decorations and fireworks.

Finally, Ben and Jennifer have also suffered the fate of many high-profile, wealthy people who live in a world where many of their close friends, parents and other family members have also been divorced. Recent statistics have shown that people with such unhappy kinships and friendships have a 75 % increase in the risk of their marriage ending causing some social scientists to opine that divorce is a social contagion.

Given all the risks that Ben and Jennifer entered their marriage with one would have thought that they would have signed a pre-nuptial agreement (word is that they did not) or perhaps would have purchased something a little less costly and ostentatious than the $68 million dollar mansion which they acquired - a residence which costs an average of $1,000 per day just to keep the lights on. Perhaps people currently contemplating marriage will take note of their star-crossed relationship and endeavor to make sure that "the odds be ever in your favor” - at least as much as possible.

**Ronald Bavero is a highly regarded divorce attorney, legal educator and author of the critically acclaimed, five-star book, “An Elephant Doesn’t Marry A Giraffe – Everything I Learned As A Divorce Attorney.” This book is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Goodreads and Draft2Digital. He also maintains a website www.divorcedeverafter.com where you can find more information about his book and many other interesting and valuable articles about the process of divorce and separation.