Just In: Some Disturbing 2020 Local Marriage and Divorce Numbers

Here are last year's stats, and those of every year since I
began keeping record 25 years ago.

I just got last year's divorce and marriage stats from the local Circuit Court this week, numbers I have recorded each year since 1996. 

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.