David Beart asked:


Dissolving a marriage is never easy, but understanding the process can certainly help you to feel more informed. The actual degree of complexity of divorce will usually depend upon how much money and property is involved as well as whether there are children from the marriage.

First, it should be understood that there are two types of divorces. They are fault and no-fault. Prior to the 1970s most divorces were granted on a fault basis, with one spouse being found at fault of the failure of the marriage due to adultery, etc. The other spouse was then awarded the divorce on those grounds. The no-fault divorce movement grew out of couples who wished to dissolve the marriage but not place blame on one another. Under a no-fault divorce, there is no need to find fault on the part of either spouse. Through this type of divorce, the couple may agree to divorce by mutual consent. In situations where a fault divorce is granted, the issues involve may be considered in regards to child support, child custody and spousal support.

Grounds for a divorce may also be contested or uncontested. When a divorce is uncontested, both spouses agree to the divorce as well as all other issues such as child custody and property division. In this situation a property settlement agreement is reached prior to the final divorce degree. If both spouses agree on all issues, it may not even be necessary to have a lawyer prepare the settlement agreement. In the event there is some disagreement, mediation may be necessary to settle those matters.

When there is significant disagreement regarding certain issues, such as property division or child custody, each spouse typically hires a lawyer to represent them regarding the settlement negotiation. When the issues cannot be decided out of court, then the divorce is said to be contested. Contested divorces typically take much longer than uncontested divorces. A process called discovery begins the contested divorce process. The discovery process involves either mandatory or voluntary delivery of information that is needed to prepare the case of each spouse. The type of information that is typically involved includes tax and financial records.

Most judges will commonly order both spouses as well as their lawyers to meet on several occasions prior to trail in order to reach an out of court agreement. If this is not possible, then a trial will take place. Both sides have a chance to testify as well as respond to allegations, present witnesses and cross-examine the witnesses of the other side. Expert witnesses may also be called upon, including child psychologists, property appraisers, etc. At the conclusion of the trial, the judge will make a final decision regarding division of property, spousal support, child custody and child support.

The division of property will typically be based on several factors. Courts are required to adhere to state law regarding the division of property between spouses. In states which are community property states, the court must divide marital property equally between spouses. Marital property includes all property as well as income that is acquired during the marriage. Property that was brought into the marriage by one or the other spouse is not included. In addition, any property that was given as a gift to one spouse only is not divided. Community property states include Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin.

All courts are required to take the best interest of the child into consideration when determining child custody. A variety of factors may apply, including the child’s wishes, who has been the primary caretaker of the child in the past, the quality of the parent-child relationship, the physical and mental health of the parent and the child, etc.

Generally, the parent that does not receive custody will be ordered to pay a child support amount that is set by the court. A standard schedule is usually utilized for determining the amount of child support.

Do-it-yourself divorces can be utilized in instances where the divorce is uncontested and there are no serious issues such as property division or child custody to consider. These types of divorces are usually utilized when the couple has not been married very long and there is no property or children involved.

It should be considered that in some states a specified period of legal separation must be met before the court will issue a decree of divorce. This amount of time ranges from state to state and may be anywhere from six months up to three years.

Understanding the requirements for divorce as it applies to your specific situation and state can make the process of getting divorced a bit easier to endure. It is always a good idea to seek out professional legal advice from an attorney specializing in divorce and family law when you are considering a divorce or a legal separation.



HUBERT

Kalman Heller asked:


This past year my wife and I celebrated our 25th anniversary. It is the second marriage for both of us and the relationship has only grown stronger over the years, teaching me more about love and trust and dependence then I ever imagined. Reaching this special “silver moment” spurred me to look around and think about the number of friends we have who also have great second marriages and led me to question the alleged statistic that 60+% of second marriages end in divorce. I also thought about how many friends we have who are still in their original marriages and appear to be very happy. Thus, I decided it was time to do some research on divorce rates.

In the process of preparing for this article, I learned what I had long suspected. The commonly quoted numbers are overstated myths, the more accurate numbers reflect complex factors, and that our society really has two very separate divorce rates, a lower rate (by half) for college-educated women who marry after the age of 25 and a much higher rate for poor, primarily minority women who marry before the age of 25 and do not have a college degree (most of the research focused on women; the little I read about men suggested similar outcomes).

The Statistics:

A false conclusion in the 1970s that half of all first marriages ended in divorce was based on the simple but completely wrong analysis of the marriage and divorce rates per 1000 people in the U.S. A similar abuse of statistical analysis led to the conclusion that 60% of all second marriages ended in divorce. These errors have had a profound impact on attitudes about marriage in our society and it is a terrible injustice that there wasn’t more of an effort to get accurate data (essentially only obtainable by following a significant number of couples over time and measure the outcomes) or that newer, more accurate and optimistic data isn’t being heavily reported in the media.

It is now clear that the divorce rate in first marriages probably peaked at about 40% for first marriages around 1980 and has been declining since to about 30% in the early 2000s. This is a dramatic difference. Rather than view marriage as a 50-50 shot in the dark it can be viewed as a having 70% likelihood of succeeding. But even to use that kind of generalization, i.e., one simple statistic for all marriages, grossly distorts what is actually going on.

The key is that the research shows that starting in the 1980s education, specifically a college degree for women, began to create a substantial divergence in marital outcomes, with the divorce rate for college-educated women dropping to about 20%, half the rate for non-college-educated women. Even this is more complex, since the non-college educated women marry younger and are poorer than their college grad peers. These two factors, age at marriage and income level, have strong relationships to divorce rates; the older the partners and the higher the income, the more likely the couple stays married. Obviously, getting a college degree is reflected in both these factors.

Thus, we reach an even more dramatic conclusion: That for college educated women who marry after the age of 25 and have established an independent source of income, the divorce rate is only 20%!

Of course, this has its flip side, that the women who marry younger and divorce more frequently are predominately Black and Hispanic women from poorer environments. The highest divorce rate, exceeding 50%, is for Black women in high poverty areas. These women clearly face extraordinary challenges and society would do well to find ways to reduce not just teen pregnancies but early marriages among the poor and develop programs that train and educate the poor, which will not only delay marriage but provide the educational and financial foundation that is required to increase the probability of a marriage being successful. Early marriage, early pregnancy, early divorce is a cycle of broken families that contributes significantly to maintaining poverty. The cost to our society is enormous.

Here is some additional data about divorce in first marriages before moving on to the limited data available about second marriages. Divorce rates are cumulative statistics, i.e., they don’t occur at a single moment in time but add up over the years of marriage and do so at different rates. After reviewing numerous sources, it appears that about 10% of all marriages end in divorce during the first five years and another 10% by the tenth year. Thus, half of all divorces are within the first ten years. (Keep in mind this is mixing the disparate college-non-college group rates.) The 30% divorce rate is not reached until the 18th year of marriage and the 40% rate is not reached until the 50th year of marriage! Thus, not only is the rate of divorce much lower than previously thought but at least half of all divorces occur within the first ten years and then the rate of divorce slows dramatically. Since the divorce rate for women married by 18 is 48% in the first ten years and that group, once again, is primarily poor, minority women, the rate for educated couples is much less during those first ten years.

No wonder the divorce rate in Massachusetts is the lowest in the country. We have the highest percentage of college graduates. That explains why I have so many first marriage friends!

Finding meaningful data about the divorce rates for second marriages was difficult. But knowing that the rate for first marriages has been grossly overstated and poorly understood for decades suggested a likely similar outcome for the data on second marriages. One report indicated that the divorce rate for remarried, white women is 15% after three years and 25% after five years. This ongoing study indicated a definite slowing of the rate over time but did not have enough years measured to draw more long-term conclusions. However, it did indicate that the same factors with first divorces were at play here. Age, education, and income levels were also highly correlated with the outcomes of second marriages. For example, women who remarried before the age of 25 had a very high divorce rate of 47%, while women who remarried over the age of 25 only had a divorce rate of 34%. The latter is actually about the same for first marriages and likely also would prove to be an average of different rates based socioeconomic factors. Thus, my take on this limited amount of data is that divorce rates for second marriages may not be very different than those for first marriages. So my small sample of friends, who remarried older, had college degrees, and joint incomes, is probably not a distorted view of the success rate of second marriages.

Cohabitation:

In the course of gathering information about divorce rates, I came across a few articles describing the growing frequency of couples choosing cohabitation over marriage. I don’t have any figures that I consider accurate enough to report on the percentage of cohabitating couples but a July 24, 2007 Boston Globe article on cohabitating parents sheds some light and raises some serious concerns about this trend.

I must admit a bias here. From my professional experience, I believe cohabitating couples are afraid of the commitment that marriage requires. Certainly a piece of this is what I stated at the beginning of this article, that the myth of the divorce rate has placed a dark cloud over the institution of marriage. The reason for my concern is the following data reported in the Globe article. There is a marked increase in births to cohabitating couples, up from 29% in the early 1980s to 53% in the late 1990s. When you compare what has happened to those relationships when the child is two years old, 30% of the cohabitating couples are no longer together while only 6% of the married couples are divorced. This is another serious societal problem as it contributes to the U.S. having the lowest rate of all Western countries, 63%, of children being raised by both biological parents.

In addition, the general data suggests that cohabitating couples break up at twice the rate of married couples. Of course, this kind of simple statistic hides many complex factors with regard to who actually constitutes the population of cohabitating couples and the likelihood that many choose to live together with no real intention of permanence. However, my main point here is the concern that many couples may be choosing cohabitation over marriage because they actually believe that the institution of marriage is unhealthy and too risky, a conclusion that my review of divorce rates strongly disputes.

Conclusion:

The historical belief that 50% of all marriages end in divorce and that over 60% of all second marriages end in divorce appears to be grossly overstated myths. Not only is the general divorce rate most likely to have never exceeded 40% but the current rate is probably closer to 30%. A closer look at even these lower rates indicate that there are really two separate groups with very different rates: a woman who is over 25, has a college degree, and an independent income have only a 20% probability of her marriage ending in divorce; a woman who marries younger than 25, without a college degree and lacking an independent income has a 40% probability of her marriage ending in divorce.

Thus, factors of age, education, and income appear to play a significant role in influencing the outcome of marriages and that for the older, more educated woman, getting married is not a crap shoot but, in fact, it is highly likely to produce a stable, lifelong relationship.



STANFORD

Faye B. Roberts asked:


A copy of your divorce records is kept and can be obtained at any time from your county’s Record Office of Licensing Branch of the state or country in which your divorce took place. If you have moved since the divorce you will need to contact the location where the proceedings took place.

Be aware that certain guidelines must be followed when requesting a copy of your divorce papers. Each Records Office has different policies and procedures but these will be outlined for you when you request your copy of the Divorce Certificate. There may be a brief waiting period, again that may vary with each location.

Divorce records have a great number of purposes. They are a conclusion to the divorce agreement which took place in a Court of Law. The greatest importance of divorce papers is to ensure your divorce is legal and that the documents were signed by a Judge in a Court of Law. A divorce is only legalized when it is has gone through the proper legal channels and is approved by the Court.

Sometimes people believe they are divorced while in reality they are not. This could happen in an uncontested divorce if the respondent fails to file a response to the divorce, especially when the issues were settled between both parties beforehand. It is always best to insure that the divorce has been legalized to prevent future difficulties.

The main reason why someone may require divorce records is because they wish to remarry. Many states and countries require a copy of the divorce papers in order to issue a new Marriage Licence. This insures that the divorce was legal so the new marriage may take place.

If someone is applying for a legal name change they may also need to provide these court documents. Applying for landed immigration status may also require proof of marital status by providing a marriage certificate and/or divorce decree. These papers are frequently needed to start the application process.

In today’s society divorce seems to be a common occurrence and there are several websites that cater to finding divorce records. The most popular being through a state’s or countries Vital Records website or Federal Records website. These can be found by using an Internet Search Engine. These websites may charge a fee for this service and are not considered a free public service.

Be certain you know if your document needs to be certified or not. A certified copy of a Divorce Certificate is issued with a raised seal. It will also show the signature of the proper authority and will be printed on security paper. A certified copy may be required to change your last name or remarry. Divorce certificates that are uncertified will be photocopied on plain white paper from the original document that was filed in the court system. Obtaining a copy that is certified can lead to longer waiting periods.

You may need to produce your divorce records at various time throughout your life. It is best to get a copy and keep it in safe place in case the need arises. In the event you have difficulty obtaining your divorce records through the proper channels you can seek advice from your Lawyer or any Family Law Attorney.



LUCIO