When my father announced he wanted a divorce, I was shocked and dismayed. Like anyone in this sad situation, it felt like the foundations of my family were about to be ripped apart.

Only I was no child when this happened; I was 47, with a successful career in the property sector, and had left home years earlier. My parents, meanwhile, were 78 and 80 – old enough to know their own minds and, of course, perfectly entitled to spend their twilight years however they chose.

Many people think that adult children can’t be hurt by divorce or, at least, that it bothers them less.

Nevertheless, the impact on my life has been seismic – just as much as if I had been a child and, I’d say, even more so in some ways.

Had my parents divorced decades before there would have been a chance for them to rebuild their lives and find new partners. Maybe we could have all wound up with a big, blended and supportive family.

Instead, my older brother Bobby and I have spent the past 15 years since their late-life separation negotiating a harrowing and exhausting situation where our increasingly frail parents – now 95 and 93 – both live alone thousands of miles apart, each of them wholly dependent on us for emotional and practical support.

Then, of course, there’s the financial implications. So much money has been lost dismantling the life they’d built together, money that should have gone towards providing them with a comfortable, companionable and worry-free old age.

The bitter fallout has dramatically changed the course of my life and had a catastrophic impact on my relationship with both of my parents. In fact, I’ve not seen my father in person since it happened.

Lisa-Jane Stratton was 47 when her father announced he wanted a divorce

It was my dad’s decision, back in 2010, to call time on their marriage of 56 years, a choice that came out of the blue after a blazing row over where they should live out their retirement years.

My father is American, and though they had relocated from the US to Hove, East Sussex, in 1999, Dad wanted to see out his days back in his homeland – whereas Mum, who’s English, wanted to stay in the UK.

After their row – which saw Dad storm off to the US – Mum had imagined he would spend time with his family in Pennsylvania, cool down and return home. He never did.

Instead, he hired two lawyers to represent him – one in the UK and the other in the States.

My mother felt betrayed; while the marriage was far from perfect, they’d been together since the 1950s when Dad came to London with the US navy, and had weathered the ‘storms’ that so many marriages incur.

As a stay-at-home mother, Mum wasn’t used to navigating the strategies and complexities that come with divorce, unlike my father, who had a successful career in the car sales industry. Understandably, she found the thought of potentially losing everything they’d built together devastating.

Although they were from very different backgrounds – Mum’s upper middle-class English, while Dad was a working-class American boy made good – they made a pretty good team. So while a temporary separation didn’t cause Bobby and me much concern, Dad’s insistence on proceeding with a divorce completely blindsided us.

Admittedly, they’d had their fair share of arguments when we were growing up, over petty things like Dad working too much or being out tidying the garden when he knew Mum was about to serve dinner, but overall they’d rubbed along pretty contentedly. We’d had a good life, my father’s well-paid job meaning I wanted for nothing – I went to good schools and we travelled all over Europe and America – and I can’t deny he was a good dad to me.

Lisa-Jane stepped in to support her mother. Her father felt hurt that she took her mum's side

I know Mum would have been happy to lead a transatlantic life, with properties in both countries – which, pre-divorce, they easily would have been able to afford – but Dad wouldn’t listen.

When Mum called, in a terrible state, to tell me the news, I immediately stepped in to give her my full support. I didn’t hide my anger from Dad and called him, demanding to know why he was doing this to not only her, but himself.

He, in turn, felt hurt that I was ‘taking my mother’s side’, driving a wedge between us that meant we didn’t talk for five years.

In the early months, letters from my father’s divorce lawyers would send Mum into an anxiety-fuelled frenzy and she would be straight on the phone to me, seeking reassurance.

I was fielding calls from her at all times of the day and night, and after a long day’s work running my lettings office, I’d be up late into the night poring over legal and financial paperwork, making sure Mum’s interests were well-protected – as well as making the three-hour round trip from my home in London to Hove every weekend.

I had to constantly reassure her that Dad wouldn’t ‘take her to the cleaners’ and she wouldn’t end up on the streets, starving. It was exhausting.

I was so stressed, my hair started to thin significantly – something that has continued in the years since. While some of it might be down to age and hormones, there’s no doubt that this period of extreme stress had a detrimental and long-standing effect.

I also started to be plagued by insomnia, worrying about whether Mum was OK, and how long it would take me to reach her in an emergency. It’s a situation that has only worsened over time.

Initially my brother – who lives in the States – remained impartial, trying to persuade Dad to ditch the lawyers and go for mediation. Both of us agreed that the tens of thousands that went on legal fees would have been much better spent keeping them comfortable in their old age.

However, even more than the wasted money, I was worried sick about the effect the court battle might have on my parents’ health.

I’d heard of ‘silver splitters’ – people separating in their 50s and 60s, once their children have left home – but surely the strain of divorce, one of the most stressful life events there is, would take too great a toll on octogenarians?

In the event, the court judgment went very much in my mother’s favour, as she got to keep the UK home and around 65 per cent of their assets. Although I was in my 50s and my brother his 60s when their divorce was finalised, I remember him saying: ‘It’s sad, after all these years, that we’re now from a broken home.’

Today, instead of being able to take comfort in seeing my parents live out their old age together, for the past 15 years I’ve spent it hot-footing it to Hove every weekend to look after Mum.

She now relies on carers, largely due to her impaired eyesight, which means she struggles to see her medication or to cook meals.

I have cameras set up in her flat so I can check on her 24 hours a day, making it hard for me to properly switch off, and I still struggle to get a full night’s sleep.

While I’ve never had children, I imagine caring for an elderly parent feels much like having a baby.

Meanwhile, my father, who I haven’t seen since the divorce, is thousands of miles away, in a care home in Pennsylvania, which costs him £7,500 a month.

Doctors didn’t feel he was safe to return to living alone in his apartment after a fall several years ago. Bobby visits Dad regularly, and we update one another on our parents’ respective health.

I don’t resent looking after Mum; I feel very privileged, at 62, to still have her.

However, rarely a day goes by when I don’t imagine how much more pleasant, and less stressful, the past 15 years would have been if my parents had just stayed together.

Even though they would both need care, at least they would have companionship – and I wouldn’t feel guilty about the hours my mother spends alone while I’m working.

I would also have felt freer to focus on building a relationship of my own if my mind hadn’t always been on my mother, who is so very reliant on me.

All that fretting doesn’t make for a carefree life.

I was so angry with Dad for having made both of their old ages harder than they needed to be that there was no contact between us for about five years after the divorce.

Then he started sending me birthday and Christmas cards, often including money, which I’d send back, by return of post. My brother would plead with me on Dad’s behalf, asking: ‘Don’t you think, after all he did for us growing up, you could see a way of speaking to him again?’

However, it wasn’t until 2020, at the height of the pandemic, that I finally reached out to Dad, conscious that people his age were very vulnerable to coronavirus.

Even Mum had been asking after him, wondering if I’d heard how he was doing. I guess, once the anger over the divorce had subsided, she was able to recall some of the fondness she had felt for him.

Bobby asked how I’d feel if he called one day to say Dad had died and we still hadn’t spoken. I wasn’t sure I could live with that regret. So, on Father’s Day in June 2020, when Bobby was visiting Dad at the home, he arranged for us to speak over a WhatsApp video call. My eyes welled up with tears when I saw his face, looking older but so familiar. He was still, despite all that had happened, very much my dad.

The conversation was a little strained, after so long, and I couldn’t help myself asking if he had any regrets about the divorce. He said: ‘I think about it all the time and yes I do.’

I felt so many emotions hearing this; pity and regret for my parents that things couldn’t have been different, sadness, but also a little bit vindicated that he realised he’d made a mistake.

I felt genuine compassion, mixed with a bit of anger, when I told him: ‘You tried to ruin Mum’s life, and, in the process, you ruined your own, too. If you’d stayed here, I could have taken care of you both.’

He nodded his head in agreement, however we both knew it was too late for regrets. We’ve chatted most weeks since then, sharing memories, jokes and tales of our extended family, and it feels much less strained now.

Earlier this year I was going to travel to the US to visit him, but Mum is becoming increasingly forgetful and I realised I’d never forgive myself if something happened to her while I was thousands of miles away, visiting Dad.

I told him that, as much as I’d love to see him, I simply can’t take that risk – I haven’t travelled abroad at all for six years, as I don’t want to be too far away from Mum – and he seemed very understanding, telling me I must prioritise my mother. I am, after all, all she has.

Whether that was down to feelings of guilt, or simple concern, on his part, I don’t really know.

I would love nothing more than to be able to spend time with both of my parents, but it would be impossible for them to be together now.

At their ages, even if they could handle the eight-hour flight, it’s unlikely either country would welcome them, given the financial burden on health and social care services they represent.

Some marriages, if the parties involved are making each other miserable, should, of course, end in divorce. However, it makes me feel very sad that they’ve both had such lonely dotages when they could have grown old together – perhaps forgetting along the way the many things that once annoyed them about one another.

And I can’t help but think how much happier my own life would have been if they had stayed together.