Some Basic Background 13
keep the costs down, or to avoid the extra stress of a prolonged
fight over the kids, etc.). The remaining 40 percent of our cases
involve at least one party who really hates the other’s guts and
wants a prolonged fight to the death.
I have also noticed some definite trends in the timing of divorce
filings. A seemingly disproportionate 25 percent of my firm’s new
cases start up in the month of January each year, and another
20 percent in September. The certainty that I have always felt in
narrowing down the largest single surge in new divorce cases to
the month of January was recently borne out in another study I
read that actually identified January 7 as the single day with the
most divorce filings of the year. Perhaps people really do make,
and then follow through on, their New Year’s Resolutions. That
study went on to cite the primary reasons given for divorce in the
cases they had tracked—starting with infidelity as the leading
cause, followed by lack of sex and basic boredom.
The other 55 percent of divorce filings are scattered pretty
evenly throughout the other ten months of the year. I have con-
cluded that spouses contemplating divorce tend to hold off dur-
ing the typical family holiday periods (i.e., Christmas and New
Year’s Day and the end of summer/Labor Day family vacations).
Then, as soon as school starts back up for the fall or winter ses-
sion, folks begin to resume their individual lives and schedules—
one component of which can now more easily include a visit to
the divorce attorney’s office.
So there you have my personal, quasi-statistical observations.
Now on to a quick summary of the more scientifically quantified
data on marriage and divorce.
Who gets married nowadays? About two and one-half million
couples get married each year in America. Nonetheless, there
seems to be a widespread perception that marriage is on the
decline, and, in fact, this is supported statistically. Fewer peo-
ple are marrying, many simply choosing to live together. As of
2006, 88 percent of Americans had married at least once, but that’s
down from 94 percent as recently as 1988.
Overall, however, the actual total marriage rate is in fact statis-
tically higher than it was a century ago. This, of course, is thanks