There is no evidence to support the myth that the first Monday in January is Divorce Day, the busiest day for family lawyers, find a new analysis by the Marriage Foundation.
The study, Divorce Day – Myth or Reality finds that there is no official data that supports the claim, with the closest figures showing the number of “divorce starts”, being recorded on a quarterly basis.
Analysing this Ministry of Justice data, the study says, “if divorce day is real, we should see more divorce starts in each of the first two quarters compared to the next two quarters”.
“Based on the last 12 years data, there are generally more divorces started in the first two quarters than should be the case. In Q1 – on average – there are 1,483 more divorces than there should be each year, adding 1.4 per cent to the year’s total. In Q2, there were 737 more divorces, adding 0.7 per cent. But look at the range. For Q1, there were 5,019 more divorces than there should have been in 2021 yet 2,908 fewer in 2018. For Q2, there were 6,065 more divorces than there should have been in 2022 yet 5,999 fewer in 2020.”
It goes on: “So, is ‘divorce day’ a myth or reality? On the basis of averages, there may be a grain of truth to it. But on the basis of year-to-year variation, the evidence is far from convincing.”
Harry Benson, Marriage Foundation’s Research Director commented: “At the beginning of each year one family law firm or another always advances the claim that the first Monday of January is so-called divorce day, the day when they see a massive spike in enquiries, but this seems based on nothing more than anecdotal evidence. There is no official national data that backs this up and even analysing MoJ statistics produces an unclear picture. While we can say there is a tiny increase in the average number of divorce starts in Q1 compared to subsequent quarters, less than 1.5 per cent over the 12 years analysed that is as far as the data takes us.”
He continued: “There are other alternative explanation as why there might be an increase in enquiries in January, the most likely being that any uptick is explained by the pent-up demand from the two-week holiday break. However we can say with absolute certainty that divorce rate in the UK has been steadily declining and is at a level last seen in 1970.”
In a major study, published last year, Marriage Foundation concluded that the Divorce rate had plummeted, with the divorce rate the same as in 1970 and the lifetime risk of divorce dropping to 35 per cent, down from 44 per cent in 1986.
Interestingly the report, Why are fewer women (but not men) divorcing? while acknowledging that there are fewer people getting married, with the number of marriages has been falling consistently since 1972 during the same period divorces went up before coming down, with the number of wife granted divorces falling from 109,883 in 1986 to 70,607 in 2021 a change of nearly 40,000. Over the same period, the number of husband granted divorces fell from 43,439 to 41,327, a drop of 2,112. This means that the significant drop in divorces was almost entirely due to fewer women submitting applications, a change of nearly 40,000 since 1986.
Harry Benson, Marriage Foundation’s Research Director concluded: “So while we can’t find any hard evidence to support the myth of divorce day, we can say with complete confidence that the divorce rate is falling and this is good news for marriage, good news for couples looking to tie the knot and good news for society as whole as marriage continues to be the gold standard of relationships, something recognised by young and old.”
No evidence to support first Monday of January being Divorce Day
