Family Law

Divorce by the Numbers - How Likely Are You to Divorce?

By J. Benjamin Stevens

There have been many studies done about divorce.  I don't believe that statistics tell the whole story about things, but they do tell "a" story.  The following fifteen statistics might be interesting to you:

1. If you're a woman who got married before the age of eighteen, your marriage faces a 48 percent likelihood of divorce within ten years.  (link)
2. If you're a woman who wants a child – either a first child or an additional child – much more strongly than your spouse does, your marriage is more than twice as likely to end in divorce as the marriages of couples who agree on how much they do or don't want a child. (link)
3. If you have two sons, you face a 36.9 percent likelihood of divorce, but if you have two daughters, the likelihood rises to 43.1 percent. (link)
4. If you're a man with high basal testosterone, you're 43 percent more likely to get divorced than men with low testosterone levels. (link)
5. If your child has been diagnosed with ADHD, you are 22.7 percent more likely to divorce before that child turns eight years old than parents of a child without ADHD. (link)
6. If you are currently married but have cohabited with a lover other than your current spouse, you are slightly more than twice as likely to divorce than someone who has never cohabited. (link)
7. If you didn't smile for photographs early in life, your marriage is five times more likely to end in divorce than if you smiled intensely in early photographs. (link)
8. If your child has died after the twentieth week of pregnancy, during labor, or soon after labor, you are 40 percent more likely to divorce than if you had not lost a child. (link)
9. If you're a woman who has recently been diagnosed with cancer or multiple sclerosis, your marriage is six times more likely to end in divorce than if your husband had been diagnosed with those diseases instead. (link)
10. If you're a Caucasian woman and you're separated from your spouse, there's a 98 percent chance that you'll be divorced within six years of that separation; if you're a Hispanic woman, the likelihood is 80 percent; if you're an African-American woman, the likelihood is 72 percent. (link)
11. If you're a dancer or choreographer, you face a 43.05 percent likelihood of divorce, compared with mathematicians, who face a 19.15 percent likelihood, and animal trainers, who face a 22.5 percent likelihood. (link)
12. If you're a farmer or rancher, you face only a 7.63 percent likelihood of divorce, joined by other low-risk occupations such as nuclear engineers, who face a 7.29 percent likelihood, and optometrists, who face a mere 4.01 percent likelihood. (link)
13. If either you or your spouse have suffered a brain injury, your marriage faces a 17 percent chance of ending in divorce. (link)
14. If you're an African-American woman, your first marriage has a 47 percent likelihood of ending in divorce within ten years; for Hispanic women, the likelihood is 34 percent; for Caucasian women, it's 32 percent; for Asian women, it's 20 percent. (link)
15. If you're a woman serving actively in the military, your marriage is 250 percent more likely to end in divorce than that of a man serving actively in the military. (link)

Source: "15 Signs You'll Get Divorced" by Anneli Rufus, published at The Daily Beast. Thanks to Guy Kawasaki for his post about this article.

Full post as published by SC Family Law Blog on March 07, 2011 (boomark / email).