The property boom makes it harder for couples to set up home - but it's also harder to separate, writes Kate Holmquist

When couples argue, money is high on the list of flashpoints. Unmanageable debt, combined with the stress of a two-working-parent household, can lead to marriage breakdown.

Middle-class parents suffocated by debt to the point that it may even have been a factor in the break-up of their marriages is something that Mabs (Money Advice & Budgeting Service) sees frequently. Michael Culloty, spokesman for Mabs, says that lone mothers whose marriages have ended make up 30 per cent of Mabs clientele. Nearly 70 per cent of their clients are lone parents who manage money well, but do not have enough of it. "The grinding, long-term stress they have been suffering day after day can lead to ill-health for them and their children," he says.

Money can be a subject of manipulation and power struggle in marriages, says Lisa O'Hara of the Marriage and Relationships Counselling Services in Dublin. "Whether some couples stay together because it would be too difficult to disentangle joint possessions and investments is difficult to say, but certainly one would wonder would they be less motivated to leave their relationship because of this," she says.

Estate agents tell of viewing houses that have effectively been divided down the middle for many years, with his and hers accommodation.

Financial difficulties, losing a job, marriage troubles and moving house are all on the list of the top 10 trigger stresses that can lead to mental and physical ill health. When a couple decide to split, they may find themselves enduring all four of these at once.

Rising property prices mean that divorcing couples are increasingly likely to lose their family homes in the settlement, and along with the house all the support networks that go with being rooted in a community. Only those couples with multiple assets, or high earnings that enable them to go deeper into debt, can afford the cost of adding another residence to the one they already have.

"For most people, the family home is the biggest or, often, the single asset, and the only way to divide it equitably is to sell it," says David Bewley, director, residential sales, at Lisney.

Estate agents report seeing more houses sold as a result of separation and divorce and more lone parents seeking affordable family houses. "People are having to live in houses they may not have considered before. We are seeing it more and more," Bewley says.

How do these people deal with having to lower their expectations? "You may have to be philosophical about it," says Bewley.

Tina was so unhappy in her marriage that she left the family home and moved to a glorified bedsit in a period house divided into flats. Paying €750 per month in rent, she is all too aware of her reduced circumstances. "The choice was this or my sanity," she says.

Maura Wall Murphy, former head of the Family Mediation Service and now a life coach, says, "When you are desperate enough to get out of a marriage, downmarket isn't so downmarket. Financial pain is relative."

For many separating couples, hanging on to the family home is a priority.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, it was commonplace for the wife and children to remain in the family home. Often, one partner would buy the other out. By taking a second mortgage, an earning wife could foot the cost of the new mortgage, while giving her ex-husband cash for a downpayment on an apartment or house. Alternatively, a husband could use the family home as equity on an interest-only mortgage, the principal of which would be paid off when the children grew up and the family home was sold. When divorce first came in, the rule of thumb was that the wife and children remained in the family home until the youngest child reached age 18 or left full-time education.

"Now it is almost impossible to buy each other out, unless one of the separating partners has other assets or is a very high earner," says Wall Murphy.

Eugene Davy, a family lawyer with 25 years' experience, agrees: "When forced to sell, it can be very punishing. The cost of selling one property and buying two smaller ones is huge. There are three sets of legal costs, auctioneers' fees and two stamp duty costs. It is much cheaper for one of the parties to buy the other out, but this is becoming increasingly difficult."

There's an element of truth in the observation that only the rich and the poor can afford to divorce, believes Davy. "The fairly well-off, with a family home worth €2 million and substantial surplus assets, invariably will not suffer a significant drop in their standard of living. Those living in local authority housing, who are entitled to social welfare, haven't very much to lose and there is a safety net there. But those in the middle - which are the majority of couples - will feel the pinch much more," he says.

Courts now routinely order the sale of family houses worth about €1 million (and as little as €800,000), so that the equity can be released to put two new roofs over the heads of the wife and children, as well as the husband.

"A couple like that will take a hit. They will have to sell the house, cut out the holidays, cut out a car. It's always very difficult. Quite often it boils down to a choice of staying within a fairly unhappy and somewhat intolerable marriage, or separating and suffering a huge drop in the material standard of living," says Davy.

Divorce is certainly a more attractive option for the relatively wealthy.

Rita, a separated mother with two children, has just been through an excruciatingly painful separation in emotional terms, but in retrospect sees herself as fortunate. She and her husband sold assets that enabled her to remain living as a full-time mother in their home, which they bought for €750,000, and remodelled - it is now worth €2 million. Reorganising the finances required some complicated financial footwork, but the couple achieved it without too much acrimony and the husband's living circumstances, too, remain comfortable.

Rita's neighbour up the road, Eleanor, who lived in a €900,000 house with her three young children, had to sell it as part of the divorce settlement. She moved to a much cheaper house quite a distance from the children's school, so that she faces a daily commute with them now. With her €35,000-a-year job, she couldn't afford childcare so she had to quit. Her husband is paying all the maintenance he can afford, considering that he is now paying two mortgages, one of them on the one-bedroom flat where he lives. Both are barely scraping by, having enjoyed quite a comfortable lifestyle before they split.

Leaving a sour marriage and finding love again may sound like a happy ending, but financially it can be a debt-trap for second partners, as much as it is for the first. James, a lawyer who is divorced, is continuing to support his ex-wife, who is not an earner, and their children in the five-bedroom family home, in the style to which they were accustomed. Meanwhile, he is living with his second-wife-to-be in a mortgaged third-floor flat with no lift - and she's pregnant, as well as working two jobs to help the new couple save for a proper house. With the debt of the first family to deal with, James and his partner are like a young couple starting out, except that James, just past 40, doesn't feel so young any more.

While it's usually the mothers struggling to live on inadequate income that Mabs sees, the fathers may suffer in other ways. Families with less expensive houses, valued at about €350,000, are unlikely to be told by the court to sell because it is impossible to house a family for less than that in Dublin and no court wants to see a wife and children made homeless. So even if the wife has an affair and throws the husband out, she will often be allowed to keep the house while he makes do by living with his parents or finding a flat-share.

"This is how a good father and a blameless husband becomes effectively homeless," Davy points out. Sucha father may be unable to have his children back to his bedsit, so he must take them to the park, to McDonald's, to the movies - which are all expensive, as well as being an artificial way of relating. He can't have them over for a meal, or kick a football with them in his own back garden.

The way Davy sees it, "there are people lobbying for the husband's point of view only, the wife's point of view only and the children's point of view only, but few are looking at the bigger picture, which is the lack of affordable housing. There is also a need for family centres where fathers can bring their children for a swim, or a game of some kind, and where there is a creche."

One reason it is so hard to respond to the big picture is because we don't know what it is. There are no statistics on what happens to families, in terms of housing and finances, following separation and divorce. Family law cases are held in camera, so that the public has little idea of the trends.

Felix McTiernan, partner in Cusack McTiernan, always encourages couples to endeavour to remain on speaking terms and seek mediation, because communicating through lawyers eats up precious funds and puts the couple's destiny in the hands of the court. Couples who can see their way to negotiating fair financial arrangements with the minimum of legal involvement may save tens of thousands, although both partners must be adequately provided for and the arrangement must be fair if it is to be ultimately approved by the court.

Exploitation of one partner by the other can be devastating. McTiernan dealt with one case where the wife, the main earner, was convinced by her husband that she was such a bad mother she gave him sole ownership of the house as well as custody of the children. The agreement was overturned in the High Court on appeal.

But it doesn't have to be a nightmare. "There are as many solutions as there are couples separating. But this can involve high borrowing, so the biggest scare of all is if someone gets sick or loses their job," says Wall Murphy. "I do notice, though, that after about two years, people seem to find their financial feet again after a divorce."

She is amazed at the "elegant" solutions couples come up with.Those who jointly own businesses may continue to run them. If they own land, they may build a second house for the husband to live in. These relationships shift from being marriages to business and shared parenting contracts - although legal boundaries need to be in place to protect all concerned. "You have to be very strong to live with such an arrangement, but it can work well," she says.

Jean, newly single in her early 30s, is delighted that she got divorced and has thrived in her career ever since. The secret of her blissful split? The couple had no children and they already owned two houses - his and hers. In today's property market, anyone entering marriage and mortgage with less, faces severe financial pain should the marriage fail.

• Names of separated and divorced people mentioned in the article have been changed as they did not wish to be identified

• Mabs is at www.mabs.ie