Divorce can certainly happen for many reasons, and no two cases are the same. Some of the top reasons that people cite include financial stress, extramarital affairs, abuse, abandonment, growing apart and criminal convictions. In some cases, divorce has multiple reasons.
But there are often deeper factors at work here. To some degree, your odds of getting divorced are simply connected to your age when you decided to get married initially. Studies show that the age with the lowest divorce rate is 32 years old. Couples who did not get married at 32 are certainly not guaranteed to get divorced, but the odds are higher.
The divorce rate changes at different ages
When studying the statistics, there is a clear correlation between age and divorce, starting with the fact that teenage marriages have incredibly high divorce rates. If someone gets married at 18 or 19, divorce is very likely.
Every year after that, the odds of divorce will drop by roughly 11%. Waiting until 20 or 25 makes a marriage more stable, in other words, even if all other factors are the same. As noted above, waiting all the way until age 32 is when the divorce odds are the lowest.
However, if you are older than 32, don’t assume your divorce odds are still going down. They are actually going back up by 5% every year. Getting married at 40 or 45 does not necessarily give you the stability that you may anticipate.
Divorce at different ages can look much different. Older couples may have more financial assets, so property division is complex, while younger couples are more likely to have children. If you and your spouse are moving toward divorce, make sure you understand all of your legal options.