Hopelessly unhappy? Drifting apart? Before you give up hope for your marriage, read this …
(I wrote this five years ago but it’s every bit as relevant today, Harry) I know. Maybe your marriage is a mess. It’s drifting, it’s become functional, it’s lost the love and it’s not what you dreamed. In short it needs a kick up the backside. Maybe you’ve even finally decided it’s over. At last […]
No fault. No divorce boom
Law changes have produced an expected blip in divorce at worst. Ministry of Justice family court statistics up to the end of December 2022 came out today. I note that their ability to publish data three months on stands in stark contrast to ONS who still haven’t published marriage statistics for 2020, which ended a […]
Some – but only some – of the rise in divorce looks real
The Mail and Times are both reporting the latest Office for National Statistics figures on divorces in England & Wales for 2021, up 9.6% on 2020. My first thoughts about this are that this is an anomaly, as I said in my quote in the print version of the Mail. The ONS statistician warns about […]
Lone parent families now at lowest level since 1990s
New figures from the Office for National Statistics present remarkable new evidence that stronger marriages have led to a dramatic reduction in family breakdown over the past decade. As ONS point out, Britain’s households are changing and there are more people cohabiting and more people living alone. However this bland statement of fact misses the […]
Rise in divorce is an anomaly. Divorce rate is still at 50 year low
New divorce figures for 2019 have been released by ONS. They show a rise of 18% from the previous year, which doesn’t sound good … at first. Our response “The 18% rise in divorces reported in 2019 by ONS is a statistical anomaly, reflecting the unwinding of delays in the legal system from the previous […]
Divorce boom? No chance
According to media reports, marriages are cracking under the strain of lockdown and divorce rates are soaring. In August, Mailonline reported a divorce boom in the US. In September BBC news reported a divorce boom in the UK. Read between the lines though and you should start to smell a rat. Mailonline’s US claim was […]
Are divorce rates surging?
Latest family court statistics from the Ministry of Justice show that the number of divorce completions shot up by 23% in the twelve months to the end of March 2020, as reported in the Daily Mail. Note that these numbers precede both lockdown in late March – so have nothing to do with Covid – […]
Half of today’s newlyweds will celebrate their ruby anniversary together
The average marriage can now expect to last 40 years, before ending in either divorce or death, according to our new analysis, reported in the Sunday Times And among the half of all today’s newlyweds who will celebrate their ruby wedding, it will be ‘until death do us part’ for 99 per cent of them. […]
Back to 1969: Lifetime divorce risk is now 35 per cent
It’s one of those assumptions that pops up with alarming regularity. ‘It’s terrible, isn’t it? Marriages are doing so badly. Surely you can’t really think getting married is a good idea?’ I get this a lot in radio interviews. And you probably see it in the newspapers or hear it on the radio or in […]
Men behaving well
In an era of #MeToo, bad behaviour by men is quite rightly under the microscope like never before. But it would be wrong to assume that it’s only now that something is being done and at last things will improve. Our new analysis of divorces shows that – at least within marriage – men have been behaving […]