From a netfriend:

These stories got told at a workshop yesterday.

One attendee had grown up on a property in the Wheat Belt, where her family still farm. She said that besides there being a shortage of eligible females in rural districts in WA, some of the guys she knew were reluctant to get married because if the marriage ended in divorce, then they could lose some of the family farm. The guys were worried that if they got married and then divorced, their former wife could end up with half the property. In the case of many properties, the guy would not be able to raise the money to buy back the half lost through divorce and the remaining property would be unviable – so he’d be forced to sell off the remainder and get out of farming.

Then another attendee said that there was a recent case where the son of a farming family got divorced and as part of the divorce settlement, his ex-wife got half of the property. The son couldn’t make a go of what was left and had to sell the family farm. The father was depressed by the loss of the family farm which he had built up for his son, and committed suicide.

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