The following are the “fresh facts” about marriage and divorce in South Africa.
1. More Marriages Are Ending Up In Divorce “Happy ever after” isn’t the way things are with South African marriages. More couples are getting divorced and moving on with their lives. If you are looking for why they are getting divorced, this piece – 10 Most Common Reasons People Get Divorced – might be of help. My interest is only in letting you know that there is a 2.3 percent increase in processed divorce papers in South Africa. Here’s how Stats SA related it: “In 2015, 25,260 completed divorce forms were processed indicating an increase of 2.3% from the 24,689 processed in 2014.
2. More Wives Are Interested In Ending Their Marriages You’re in for a shock if you’re holding on to the sentiment which says something like “more marriages are breaking up in South Africa because husbands are cheating on their wives, abandoning them for their mistress.” I can’t say the sentiment is true the other way. It probably isn’t. Here’s what is known – there were more female than male plaintiffs in the processed divorce papers.
3. Many Marriages Didn’t Make It To 10th Anniversary Yes, there were more female than male plaintiffs, the median ages at divorce in 2015 were 44 years for men and 40 years for women. And, many marriages are yet to celebrated 10th anniversary when they crashed. Stats SA said: “About 45.4% of the 2015 divorces came from marriages that did not spend their tenth wedding anniversary. In 2015, there were 14,045 (55.6%) divorces with children aged less than 18 years affected.”
4. The Registration Of Civil Marriages Dropped Generally, a total of 138,627 civil marriages, 3,467 customary marriages and 1,185 civil unions were registered in 2015. When compared with the 2014 data, it was observed that registration of civil marriages dropped by 8.1%. However, that of customary marriages and civil unions respectively increased by 13.2 and 3.6 percent.
5. The Age Outlook For The Marriages As learnt, while the median age of first-time civil marriage brides remained unchanged at 30 years, the median age for bridegrooms increased by a year from 33 years in 2014 to 34 years in 2015. For customary marriages, the median age for bridegrooms remained the same at 34 years. Nevertheless, there was a decrease of one year from 29 years in 2014 to 28 years in 2015 for brides. For civil unions, the median age for Spouse-1 remained at 36 years whereas that of Spouse-2 increased by a year from 33 years in 2014 to 34 years in 2015, Stats SA related.
Let’s conclude with a message for prospective wives/husbands. “Marriage is never a fifty-fifty thing. “It’s always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for the ride.” (Jodi Picoult, Mercy) For those suffering difficult marriage,”divorce isn’t such a tragedy. A tragedy’s staying in an unhappy marriage, teaching your children the wrong things about love…” (Jennifer Weiner, Fly Away Home).
