Charlotte Divorce Lawyer Blog

If only one partner in a marriage is a smoker, the couple is 75 to 91 percent more likely to divorce than married partners who are fellow smokers. According to a study conducted by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, the more similar people are in their values, backgrounds, and life goals, the more likely they are to have a successful marriage. Many dissimilarities between partners can increase their divorce risk, from age to ethnicity to unhealthy habits such as smoking.

If your parents are divorced, you are at least 40 percent more likely to get divorced than if they are still married. Moreover, if your parents remarried new spouses after divorcing, you are 91 percent more likely to get divorced. Divorce Magazinepublisher Dan Couvrette attributes these statistics to a certain mindset held by children of divorcees – being a witness to your parents’ divorce creates an ambivalence regarding commitment in today’s “disposable society.” Therefore, in the minds of children of divorcees, it is easier to divorce and start over in a new marriage than it is to fix the currently troubled marriage.

According to the National Marriage Project’s “State of Our Unions” Report for 2009, if you argue with your spouse about finances once per week, your marriage is 30 percent more likely to end in divorce than if you argue with your spouse about finances more infrequently. This report also found that couples with no assets at the beginning of a three-year period are 70 percent more likely to divorce by the end of the three-year period than couples who start with $10,000 in assets. This is because most divorce risk factors (such as age or education level) correlate with poverty.

According to the National Vital Statistics Report of 2003, if you live in a red state (Republican-leaning), you are 27 percent more likely to get divorced than those who reside in a blue state (Democrat-leaning). The theory behind this statistic is that red state couples tend to traditionally marry younger than blue state couples – and the younger the couple, the more at-risk the marriage is. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the states that perform the median youngest marriages are Utah, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma.

If you are a married American, your marriage is between 40 and 50 percent likely to end in divorce. Although the national divorce rate has steadily dropped since peaking at 50 percent in the 1980s, the prevalent public opinion is still that half of all marriages end in divorce. According to The National Marriage Project’s “State of Our Unions” Report for 2009, modern marriages are getting more and more resilient because people are getting better and more careful about picking their significant others.

According to a recent article in The Daily Beast, there are quite a few ways to predict whether a marriage is likely to end in divorce, including details as minor as smoking habits of spouses. Researchers who studied marriage success rates across the country have found 15 of the top ways to gauge whether a marriage will stand the test of time. Obviously, nobody can predict the future. But, this is some food for thought.