Divorce insurance has been debated for decades yet seldom implemented. This article examines what happens when actuarial and legal designs meet cultural narratives, using the 2025 South Korean series The Divorce Insurance as a fictional laboratory to test feasibility, safeguards, and family outcomes. Methodologically, the study integrates a comparative socio-legal review of past initiatives (U.S., U.K./Germany, Spain), actuarial insights on divorce risk and liquidity needs, and a cultural reading of the series. The findings suggest that the most plausible and defensible forms of divorce-related cover are limited, short-term arrangements providing targeted liquidity, either as a capital-sum benefit triggered by verified divorce (U.S. model) or as indemnity reimbursement of legal expenses (European model), whereas long-term income replacement appears far less viable. In both designs, acceptance and solvency hinge on waiting periods, exclusions against imminent divorce, counselling or partial premium refunds, and clear framing to avoid “windfall” perceptions. EU feasibility further depends on regulatory classification (legal expenses versus ancillary non-life or life-insurance formulations under Solvency II), and on the constraints imposed by the unisex-pricing framework. Juxtaposing fiction and reality clarifies where narratives converge (moral-hazard primacy) and where they diverge (supervisory pathways and regulatory complexity rather than simple authorization pathways). The article contributes a cross-disciplinary framework that links technical feasibility and regulatory constraints to cultural legitimacy, centering protections that matter for families, legal representation, relocation, and temporary housing, and outlining policy avenues for cautious innovation.
Grau et al. (2026) studied this question.