Rise of 'Gray' Divorce Forces Financial Reckoning After 50

Eighty-five percent of married women who weren't active in making long-term financial decisions said their spouse knows more about financial issues than they do.

Eighty percent of women said they were content with how financial responsibilities were split in their marriage.

"Despite all the strides that women have made, they are still abdicating important financial decisions that will profoundly affect their future," said Paula Polito, chief strategy officer for UBS Global Wealth Management, in an email. "Women and divorcees who find themselves alone wish they had been more involved in finances while they were married. Nearly all of them advise other women to get more involved early on and break the cycle of financial abdication."

Those women practice what they preach. Of the divorced or widowed women in the survey who remarried, eight out of 10 were more active in the financial decision-making in their current relationship. (That's a good move, since subsequent marriages have a higher rate of dissolving than do first marriages—and since women have longer life expectancies than men.)

Divorcees may have been burned by financial surprises that popped up in the split. Fifty-six percent of divorcees and widows discovered new financial wrinkles in the process of splitting up.

Not all were negative—some women discovered 401(k) retirement saving plans they didn't know existed, or were simply surprised at how much they didn't know about their finances.

Among the most common negative surprises were hidden spending, hidden debt and hidden accounts. Outdated wills were another unwelcome discovery. In hindsight, 94 percent of widows and divorcees would insist on complete financial transparency with their spouse.