Does Divorce Succeed?


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NOTE: Newer information on the same topics is available on The Divorce Statistics and Studies Blog. But a lot of important, pre-2008 information is collected only on this site, the Divorce Statistics Collection. So you should check both this site and the blog.


BETTER THE SECOND TIME AROUND
The chances of a woman being a bride more than once are increasing.
With the number of divorces hovering at close to 1 million a year for some time, second marriages are commonplace. According to a 2002 study from the
National Center for Health Statistics, more than half of all divorced women are likely to remarry after five years, and 75 percent are likely to remarry after a decade. "BETTER THE SECOND TIME AROUND" News Leader (Shenandoah Valley) February 27, 2005. Cited in a posting from Smart Marriages Listserv Feb 28, 2005.

"For most people, marital unhappiness was not permanent," says University of Chicago sociologist Linda Waite, Ph.D.

Recent findings indicate that two-thirds of all unhappy marriages are repaired within five years.

Dr. Waite's study also showed that only 19 percent of all divorced subjects were happily remarried.

"When researchers examined data from the late 1980s on 5,232 married adults, they found that 645 subjects reported marital dissatisfaction. When the unhappy spouses were surveyed five years later, those who had remained married were more likely than divorced subjects to state that they were happy. In fact, the most miserable marriages had the most dramatic turnarounds: 78 percent of people who stayed in "very unhappy" marriages said that the marriages were currently happy. " [Kary, T. (2002) Don't Divorce, Be Happy. Psychology Today, v35 i6 p26(1). Retrieved June 9, 2004 from Expanded Academic ASAP.]


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Originally posted and maintained by Americans for Divorce Reform; now maintained by John Crouch. You can call me at (703) 528-6700 or e-mail me through my law office's web site.