I'm a recent divorcee in the U.S. and over the course of the last year I've noticed on a number of different Medical, Insurance, Social Networking and Financial entry forms that when filling out Marital Status there are often designations of both Single and Divorced for unmarried individuals.
I have done a little research on the topic and with the exception of a few empowering blogs for women, I've not seen much discussion on the subject. As far as as I'm aware, the IRS only cares how you are filing your taxes and what exemptions you take so it seems to me that the Federal government doesn't much care how identify myself as long as I'm paying my share of taxes.
I personally don't like marking my status as Divorced as I don't like the idea of identifying myself by one of the lower events in my life. But in all but the most obviously reaching situations (like joining a website or a gym) I have marked myself with the safer Divorced as I wasn't sure if categorizing myself as Single could open me to some liability (as I suppose that technically I belong in the other category).
In dealing with financial, medical, insurance and basically any other forms found in the U.S. do I have a legal responsibility to identify myself as Divorced? Or in other words, could identifying myself as Single as opposed to a divorcee incur any type of liability of which I should be aware?
Some Background
For what it is worth, I do have a child that I share with my ex in a 50/50 shared-parenting plan. But I do not pay any alimony or child support nor do I have any financial responsibilities to my ex (we ended our marriage with a dissolution).