25 Years Of Local Marriage/Divorce Numbers

I've been recording the number of local divorces and the number
of marriage licenses issued each year since 1996.

The number of marriage licenses issued in Harrisonburg and Rockingham County in 2021 was up slightly from the prior year, but still short of the record number issued a decade ago. Overall, both divorce and marriage numbers have remained about the same over the past 25 years, in spite of a significant increase in our population.

Meanwhile we have no stats on  how many partners are living together without registering their relationships. This means we have no record of how many of these are experiencing undocumented "divorces" with equally distressing effects on children and/or other close family members and friends.

There are of course cases of ongoing abuse, infidelity and addictions where remaining together becomes untenable. Or when couples are either unable or unwilling to get the help they need to repair what has become dysfunctional in their relationship. But whatever we as a community can do to help support stable and healthy marriages can only be for the good of us all.

Here are the official numbers provided by the local circuit court:

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

2021          994                 466

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.