Here are last year's stats, and those of every year since I began keeping record 25 years ago. |
As you can see below, we had the fewest marriage licenses issued (882) in 2020 than in any of the previous 25 years except for 1996 (873) and 2010 (879).
With fewer documented marriages we obviously expect fewer documented divorces, since, as someone has wryly observed, "the biggest cause of divorce is marriage."
There were 445 official divorces last year, about the average number for the past decade. Of course there are increased numbers of undocumented partners who experience an untold number of traumatic breakups of their de facto marriages as well, and for which we have no record.
There are clearly cases of abuse, adultery, addictions and other situations where remaining together becomes untenable, and where the two parties are either unable or unwilling to do whatever is necessary to repair what has become broken and dysfunctional. But whatever we as a community can do to help support stable and healthy marriages can only be for the good of us all, provided we help people do it right, and not just apply a bandaid to their problems, or to pretend they don't exist.
Here are the official numbers we do have, each forever affecting the lives of the thousands of individuals and family members involved, each marriage and each divorce affecting not only the two spouses, but countless children, grandchildren and other family members and friends.
Year Marriages Divorces
1996 873 387
1997 950 405
1998 964 396
1999 932 405
2000 947 365
2001 1003 438 (most annual marriages)
2002 976 421
2003 961 399
2004 959 437
2005 889 381
2006 929 389
2007 925 434
2008 950 405
2009 903 347 (fewest annual divorces)
2010 879 358 (fewest annual marriages since 1996)
2011 933 433
2012 995 445
2013 924 484
2014 972 427
2015 955 474
2016 985 612 (most annual divorces)
2017 983 426
2018 935 476
2019 947 487
2020 882 445
Clarification 1: Marriage numbers are based on the number of marriage licenses issued, and include those who come here from other localities to marry, whereas divorce numbers include only the legal breakups of people who live in the City or County. However, it is logical to assume that a roughly equal number of residents from here marry in other jurisdictions as marry here from other communities, so the numbers above should be reasonably valid for comparison purposes.
Clarification 2: One cannot assume a rate of divorce based on any one year's numbers, as in "45% of first time marriages in our community will end in divorce." (And many of the above couples are marrying or divorcing for a second, third or fourth time). But with numbers like these over a period of many years, one might safely conclude that the odds of a given marriage surviving are just over 50%, not nearly as good as we would like.
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