“50% of marriages today end in divorce, and the divorce rate is on the rise.” How often have you heard that? As a family lawyer who also handles divorce and dissolutions of marriages, I hear it a lot. Dr. Anne-Marie Ambert Ambert of York University has written an article entitled “Divorce: Facts, Causes and Consequences” that paints a clearer picture about the numbers, as well as the main causes and consequences of a divorce.
While it is true that divorce rates are going up slightly, the article states that it is not true that one out of every two marriages breaks up. There are many reasons why people are led to believe that one out of two marriages ends in divorce. Often, it is simply a miscalculation or misinterpretation of the data. Take, for instance, the simplistic way of measuring divorce that is too often used wherein the number of divorces in a year is calculated over the number of marriages that have taken place during this same year. For example, if 1000 couples marry this year, and 500 couples divorce – the calculation would state that 50% of marriages today end in divorce. But, the divorcing couples obviously include couples that have married during different years (possibly even decades ago!)
In calculating the divorce rates, second or third divorces should also be taken into account. These secondary divorces increase the total number of divorces and artificially inflate the proportions of couples who divorce during their lifetime since some people contribute more than their fair share to the divorce rate.
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