"before four years" is correct and usable in written English.
You could use it when referring to something that happened four years ago. For example, "She moved to a new city before four years."
PARIS — As the euro zone's weakest members crawl out of their longest recession in modern history, their prospects of recovery are weighed down by a crushing mountain of debt far heavier than what they were carrying before four years of financial crisis.
"Earlier, the attitude was if a child got adopted before four years, there must have been something wrong," Gandhi said.
In real life, the Office for National Statistics says that 19% of divorces happen before four years and 27% before nine years.
Most bulls exit the herd before four years of age, and from seven years, the body condition of steers was observed to deteriorate.
The Arab world's most populous nation had been limping along for decades, even before four years of chaos — a revolution, a coup, countless protests and several mass killings — kicked it into the dust.
But that's been the case before: Four years ago, El Tri needed a last-minute qualifying goal from the United States just to get into the World Cup, then found itself drawn into a similarly daunting group with a pre-tournament favorite.
Some of these pulses may have begun before the last glacial maximum, before twenty-two thousago yeago ago.
I'd been to the city before, two years earlier, though I scarcely remembered it.
But administration officials have said it is highly unlikely that the lines would be eliminated before eight years.
In America, according to Larry Bumpass, professor at the University of Wisconsin, half of all marriages end before seven years.
Even some directors who left on good terms, such as Michael Hayden and Leon Panetta, were gone before three years was up.
