A study conducted by the Pew Research Center, found that the divorce rate in the United States has steadily declined over the past two decades. While the divorce rate remains historically high, when compared against a century of data, when controlled for the past few decades the divorce rate has actually gone down. The researcher tracked this trend and broke apart the numbers to determine who was getting divorced and when.

Generally, most individuals have a low lifetime risk of divorce, but this number changes as that person moves through life. It increases during certain phases, like during periods of financial turmoil, and decreases, like during periods of financial stability. The lifetime risk of divorce can be viewed as a wave pattern that ebbs and flows. It is this wave pattern that explains the juxtaposition of low divorce risk for individual people but steady rates of divorce for all marriages as they move through life.

The Pew researchers found that the chance a long duration marriage will end are relatively low, around one percent, but that chance is applied every single year through the marriage. This result in accumulated risk that means overall divorce may be likely but each year it is relatively low. It is why each marriage has a low risk of divorce but the overall number of divorces remains persistently higher.

If you are considering getting a divorce, then you may want to speak to an attorney. Divorce is a complex topic from separating assets to determining parenting time with children. As you can see, divorce can happen to any couple. There are no magic bullets or tricks. Sometimes it just happens, no matter how long the marriage lasts. An attorney can help you through this difficult period by shouldering some of the legal and emotional burden. You don’t have to handle this alone.