Hot Features
Premium
Register for Free to get streaming real-time quotes, interactive charts, live options flow, and more.
Divorce tendencies in the United States may have already started reversing this year. Even though many social and family psychology experts rightly expected an increase in the number of divorces entering 2020, the situation has somewhat leveled off.
Relationship coaches and divorce lawyers highlight financial barriers and uncertainty surrounding the pandemic among the main reasons why couples in family relationships are in no rush to file for divorce now. Even those divorcing couples on the verge of initiating marriage dissolutions are beginning to look for compromises more vigorously.
“We had a surge in divorces in the early months of the pandemic, but now we seem to be seeing a plummeting,” says Harriet N. Cohen, a divorce lawyer who founded Cohen Stine Kapoor in Manhattan.
“Ironically, the same vaccines that will hopefully return life to normal will also prove to be the catalyst for a new rise in divorces,” adds Ms. Cohen. “We have no doubt that divorces will surge again, but for now, uncertainty is the order of the day.”
While some spouses claim that their family relationship is going through hard times, most husbands and wives report that their marital unions have become even stronger in 2020. According to the American Family Survey, 58% of the couples aged 18 to 55 said that the pandemic has made them appreciate their spouse more, while 51% of men and women stated that their commitment to their spouse had increased.
Moreover, the AFS found that the share of married people reporting trouble in their marriage fell from 40% in 2019 to 29% in 2020. “It’s possible that, after COVID, there will be a period where pent-up divorce filings increase due to delayed divorces getting finalized, but, likely, the dramatic divorce decline in early 2020 will not be fully offset. In fact, because divorce ended up falling more than 20% in the wake of the last great recession, we expect the divorce rate to continue to decrease over the next decade,” says W. Bradford Wilcox, the director of the National Marriage Project at the University of Virginia, senior fellow of the Institute for Family Studies, and one of the leaders of the mentioned sociological study.
“When faced with massive social upheaval, we often develop a deeper appreciation for our families, including our spouses. For many couples who make it through this pandemic together, their marriages will likely emerge stronger and more stable, and that is a bit of good news to take away from this year of mostly bad news,” sums up Mr. Wilcox in his review of the survey results.
Lee Wilson, a relationship expert and breakup coach from Nashville, claims that divorces seemed to be rising rapidly in the early days of the pandemic before slowing down in recent months, a surprising reverse-trend he identified in April 2020 by sending out several thousand surveys to married couples. “In those first seven or eight months, divorces were certainly on the rise,” Mr. Wilson commented. “My theory is that those getting divorced at that time were couples already in troubled relationships, but due to the fact that they were getting breaks from each other, they were able to endure it.”
“Many people in difficult marriages, for a variety of reasons, just worked it out,” Mr. Wilson said. “They did what they thought was best for their situation.”
Meanwhile, Ms. Cohen, who lives in New York, also provided positive reasons why many couples may have thought twice about getting divorced. “Spending family time together, like mom and dad going for a bike ride with the children can be a great thing, or a dad hanging around the house who now gets to have a catch with his son who plays baseball,” she said. “There are some positives here for sure.”
The significantly tangible amplitude of the number of completed divorce cases raises concerns about whether this trend will affect auxiliary online divorce services and divorce companies that provide information support and other useful services. Bob Butterworth, the co-founder of one of the popular online divorce services, CompleteCase.com, which prepares documents for filing for an uncontested divorce, is confident that the level of benefit of the company will remain the same in all circumstances.
“Assessing the situation, we are well aware that our services continue to be relevant to our clients. Indeed, the financial component and the budget allocated for the divorce process can become a stumbling block for spouses planning to file for divorce. But our services help users on probably the most important stage of preparation for the process while offering fair prices and a fixed payment package,” commented Mr. Butterworth.
