Last Updated on December 2024
Key Takeaways:
- Latest Statistics: According to the latest data from the CDC, Georgia’s divorce rate was 2.1 in 2022, making it one of the states with the lowest rate.
- Gender Differences: Statistically, women file for divorce more often, which may be explained by their potentially higher sensibility to relationship problems and increased financial independence.
- Top Reasons for Divorce: While irretrievably broken marriage is the number one reason for divorce in Georgia, adultery, addiction, abandonment, and domestic violence are also common.
Divorce Rate by Years in Georgia
Tracing Georgia’s divorce rate by years is quite challenging due to the lack of data for a substantial period of time. As specified by the Healthy Marriage Divorce Center, the government stopped funding the collection and publication of national marriage and divorce statistics back in 1996. As a result, some states, including Georgia, stopped reporting this information, causing a more-than-a-decade-long gap in the data. Yet, the state’s divorce rate history can be traced back to 1990 to make certain conclusions and answer the question, “What’s the current divorce rate in Georgia, and how does it differ from past trends?”
The data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Health Statistics shows that divorce rates in Georgia decreased significantly from 5.5 in 1990 to 3.2 in 2003, before statistical reporting was terminated. While we can only guess about their fluctuations until 2016, the further decrease to 1.9 in 2020 is clearly visible, with a very slight increase in the following years. The latest available data presents a rate of 2.1 in 2022, placing Georgia among the top 10 states with the lowest divorce rates.
Who Files for Divorce More in Georgia?
Numerous worldwide statistics of divorce show that women tend to initiate marriage termination more often than men. The indicators for wives’ desire to end the marital relationship are much higher than for husbands’, not only in the United States but in other countries as well.
Dr. Rosenfeld is one of the researchers who tried to find out which gender is more likely to file for divorce. In his 2015 research, he presents data from several studies from 1956 to 2011, all proving that about two-thirds of marriage dissolutions are initiated by wives. Rosenfeld’s own investigation of 2,262 adults between 19 and 94 years shows that 69% of divorces were filed by women among the respondents. While statistical data from Georgia is quite scarce, it would be reasonable to assume that the state indicators are similar to the national ones.
What is the Most Common Reason for Divorce in Georgia?
Although Georgia law recognizes both fault-based and no-fault grounds for marriage dissolution, the number one reason for divorce in the state is still irretrievably broken marriage. In fact, many people file for a no-fault divorce even when there is a much more serious reason to end the marriage. It makes it more possible to have an uncontested process, which is much faster and simpler, unlike in cases where spouses accuse each other of some wrongdoing. It also eliminates the necessity of presenting evidence of misconduct and undergoing long litigations, securing parties’ privacy. On the other hand, often, irreconcilable differences and chronic misunderstandings between spouses are quite enough to make their marriage irretrievably broken.
While irretrievable marriage breakdown is the most popular, it is not the only reason for its termination in Georgia. The top five reasons for divorce in the state are:
- Irretrievably broken marriage;
- Cruel treatment;
- Addiction;
- Adultery;
- Desertion.
