ABSTRACT
Although the rate of divorce among younger cohorts began to stabilize over the past decade, the rate of divorce increased 50% among people between the ages of 40 and 65 and 35% among people 65 and older (Weingarten, 1988). A contemporary phenomenon is that divorce is a significant factor in the lives of individuals over 40 years of age. Of particular importance and the focus of this chapter is the fact that marital partners may well have spent more than half of their adult lives together and thus the social and psychological stresses of divorce in later life are much more traumatic (Jones & Jones, 1988). Specifically, the purpose of this chapter is to examine physical and psychological illness as antecedents, correlates, and consequences of marital distress and divorce in long-term marriages.
