Gray Divorce After 50: A Scoping Review of Antecedents, Consequences, and Family‐Theoretical Gaps

Abstract

ABSTRACT Gray divorce, marital dissolution at Age 50 and older, has become an increasingly important family transition with implications for later‐life kinship, economic security, intergenerational ties, and postmarital adjustment. This scoping review maps antecedents, outcomes, moderators, and family‐theory gaps across 25 empirical studies published between 2012 and 2025 and identified through five major databases, Google Scholar, and targeted citation‐based updates. The evidence shows that gray divorce is most consistently associated with marital biography and socioeconomic position, including higher‐order marriages, shorter union duration, lower wealth, non‐homeownership, marital quality, and emerging evidence on employment insecurity and late‐life labor market shocks. Outcomes vary across domains are as follows: Women generally face sharper economic declines; depressive symptoms, psychological distress, and service use often intensify around the divorce transition before receding; and social consequences depend on repartnering, living arrangements, gendered parent‐adult child ties, and family‐system resources. The review advances a family science interpretation of gray divorce as a heterogeneous transition shaped by life course timing, cumulative disadvantage, family stress processes, boundary reorganization, and crisis, chronic strain, and convalescence trajectories. Future work should expand cross‐national evidence, test mechanisms directly, integrate family‐theory models more explicitly, and evaluate policy and practice levers that support older adults and their families across the divorce timeline.