When did divorce begin?

Divorce isn't how anyone imagines their marriage journey will end. Nevertheless, it is the outcome for more than 600,000 American couples per year. As anyone who has been through the painful process can attest, it is much more complicated than packing your bags and leaving, often requiring courts, lawyers, mediators and staggering amounts of cash. How long has the institution of divorce been around?

Origins of an idea

Divorce, like marriage, has been part of human society since antiquity. Certain Greek states "permitted both husband and wife to call for and effect a divorce," and later, "divorces became very common" in the latter stages of the Roman Empire, said the University of Chicago. Yet "throughout most of history there was a strong taboo against couples splitting up, in large part because "it was the woman who was branded most harshly" if a marriage collapsed, said JSTOR Daily. In the past, "murder, bigamy, desertion and a host of other social practices" were used as an end-run around the official termination of a marriage, said the Journal of Modern History.

The modern concept of divorce is often traced to the efforts, beginning in 1527, of British King Henry VIII to annul his marriage to Catherine of Aragon so that he could marry Anne Boleyn. He got what he wanted, but change for the masses came slowly. "When a divorce law was finally enacted in 1857, and the "floodgates" were opened, the number of divorces in English history stood at a mere 324," said Smithsonian Magazine. But the Anne Boleyn affair is responsible for introducing the "historically unprecedented idea that marriage should be based on love and mutual affection," said Family Process.

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The U.S. lagged behind the U.K. in terms of liberalizing its divorce regime. "For most of U.S. history, getting a divorce was difficult," said The Conversation, and many states "banned it entirely, while others permitted it only under limited circumstances." Deep into the 1890s, "ending a marriage was social anathema — and virtually impossible legally," in many states, said The Washington Post. Other states allowed divorce "only in cases where adultery could be proven," which was always a difficult task.

From a taboo to a fundamental (and still controversial) right

The restrictiveness of those rules became more and more incompatible with equal rights for women and social understandings about individual liberty as the 20th century progressed and women gained other fundamental rights, including suffrage. Reformers in the U.S. began to push for what they called "no-fault divorce," which could be obtained "without anyone having to allege or prove that one party's behavior is to blame," said CNN. The first state to legalize no-fault divorce was California under Governor Ronald Reagan.

The journey from traditional divorce laws to no-fault divorce was a "long road" that wound its way through one state legislature after another until the final state to embrace the practice, which was "New York, in 2010," said JSTOR Daily. The introduction of no-fault divorce laws in the United States also revolutionized the practice and made it much more common.

Unsurprisingly, "the soul-mate model was much more likely to lead couples to divorce" because "those who felt they were in unfulfilling marriages also felt obligated" to split up rather than endure, said National Affairs. No-fault divorce laws have always been a target of criticism for conservatives, and the divorce rate did indeed more than double as no-fault divorce became the law in more and more states. But "it has declined in recent decades," rather than continuing to increase, said the National Center for Family & Marriage Research.

The proliferation of no-fault divorce was accompanied by a "decrease in female suicide," as well as a "decrease in domestic abuse of wives" and a "decrease in homicide of women by intimate partners," said NPR. That may be why "nearly 70% of divorces are initiated by women," said the Post. But divorce's benefits and availability can make it "easy to forget just how difficult and traumatic divorce can be for children," said Psychology Today. While "Republican Party platforms in Texas and Nebraska were amended in 2022" to call for the abolition of no-fault divorce, no state has yet moved to end the practice, said the The Associated Press.