Divorce rates are on the rise in Ireland. Is it time to make it a less punishing process?
Combined figures for judicial separations and divorces between 2015 and 2021 chart a more measured 5% increase in applications.
Receiving her divorce papers is a moment that Bernadette Tuite says lives with her as a surreal rite of passage, a moment that reduced years of tangled human experience down to a dry legal document.
“Suddenly, there was a divorce decree in my hand. This piece of paper didn’t feel like it had any correlation to what had happened. It was so surreal. This great love, this person that you thought you were on the Yellow Brick Road with for life, is just a name printed on a piece of paper. Suddenly, that’s all that’s left.”
Bernadette’s divorce papers came through about two years after she had first initiated proceedings in the US, where they had lived. She had been married to her ex-husband, who she refers to as C, from 1999 until 2005. She doesn’t elaborate on the precise reasons why they split.
“We met at 26 and by the time we were 35 we just weren’t compatible anymore, frankly. Then there were some other issues that just exacerbated an already dysfunctional situation," she said.
Although the former couple are no longer in contact, Bernadette characterises her divorce as “an amicable enough divorce" in that papers were signed in the end.
"But I haven’t really been in contact with him since. He remained in California, and I moved home to Ireland. Most of our life, and our marriage, was in California. There is a continent and an ocean separating us now.”
But can a divorce ever really be amicable? Rejection, anger, betrayal, separation — every marital breakdown involves painful experiences, surely?
“It’s never pretty,” Bernadette, who now lives in Cork, said.
“Of course, it’s a painful and difficult process. It’s hard for everybody, no matter who initiates the divorce. That other person will always have that magnificent ability to trigger you. They will always retain some emotional power over you. I’m lucky it was easy enough.”
Not having any children or property to argue over definitely simplified the process, she said. "You’re never going to be unentwined if there are children, and I think that seems agonising, so I consider it a blessing that there were no children involved.”
Bernadette is one of 133,420 people in Ireland counted as divorced at Census 2022. Ireland actually has the second-lowest rate of divorce in the EU, with 0.6 divorces per 1,000 people compared to a European average of 1.6 per 1,000.
Certainly impacted by cultural Catholicism, Irish reticence to legalise divorce persisted right through to the 1995 referendum which saw divorce finally legalised in 1996, decades after other Catholic countries like Italy had done so. The Irish yes vote had scraped a 50.3% majority and only made divorce possible when couples had been separated for at least four years.
The US, where Bernadette applied for her divorce, has the sixth highest rate of divorce in the world. “In 2005 they had actually streamlined the divorce process in San Francisco so much so that you could initiate all the paperwork via an ATM in the court buildings,” she said. “It was almost deliciously easy.”
Bernadette had originally been the plaintiff and filed for divorce in California, and then things got complex. Her solicitor went out of business, she lost contact with her ex for a period, and so in the end, the paperwork that legally ended their marriage came from the other side.
Now, she says, even though she is in a happy long-term relationship, she would be reluctant to tie the knot again. She sees the expectations put on marriages as unrealistic.
“We’ve been brought up to think it’s some kind of Disney moment. For a lot of women — not me, but for many — they are taught that this is going to be their big day, and there are all these dreamlike fairytale concepts being brought into this institution.
"Maybe if you were going to have children together or buy property it might be a good idea, but otherwise I don’t see why you’d bother.”
Although the worst predictions of the no-campaigners in the 1995 divorce referendum — that legalising divorce would lead to a torrent of quickie divorces — never materialised, Irish divorce rates are steadily on the rise.
In 2015 there were 4,314 applications for divorce. This number stayed in the low 4,000s and high 3,000s until a sudden spike in 2020, when there were 5,226 applications. This rose again to 5,856 in 2021.
Michelle Browne, senior family mediator and author of a book called The Scars of Divorce, which charts both her personal and professional experiences of divorce and the family law courts, says covid lockdowns undoubtedly added to pressure on couples. She personally witnessed these impacts in her private mediation practice.
“I would attribute an increase to covid most definitely. It put an awful lot of strain on families, took people out of their regular routines. I mediated throughout covid on Zoom, and people were suffering through it. In saying that, there would often have been underlying reasons there, but it definitely brought things to the surface," Ms Browne said.
The rise in divorce applications to 2021 may look like a drastic 35% jump in six years, but in 2020 the four-year waiting period for divorce was reduced to two years — this skewed statistics as some couples who would formerly have applied for a judicial separation could now apply directly for a divorce. Combined figures for judicial separations and divorces between 2015 and 2021 chart a more measured 5% increase in applications.
Ms Browne has worked full time as a mediator in Kildare for four years, but through her own personal experience of two divorces, says she has had almost two decades of experience with the family courts. And she thinks it’s time to overhaul our system and make divorce less punishing on everyone concerned.
A long-standing taboo about divorce that she sees as a hangover from our Catholic past is, she says, “a massive factor in how we have been dealing with divorce and why we are still functioning in such a difficult system".
"I see people here regularly who are crippled with guilt and who believe there is shame in the parish over their split. I think that as a society, we need to address it differently and with more compassion.”
A mother of three, Michelle has been through two divorces of her own, and describes the experiences as “horrendous”.
“I have had two difficult marriage break-ups, but I don’t mind talking about it: I discussed it in my book, because I wanted to humanise a difficult topic,” she said.
“In a way, my first divorce led to my second. My first marriage ended in a really sad marriage break-up and really, on reflection, I was quite vulnerable after it. I was a version of myself that is hard to recognise. I thought I needed to be married again, and my self-esteem was on the floor. I got myself into a really difficult second marriage.”
Ms Browne studied law and began her mediation practice to provide a service she wished she had been offered when she was going through her own divorces. Her first warning to separating couples is to keep the combative and costly court system for worst-case scenarios only.
“It’s possible to divorce amicably, but if you go down the route where you are picking up weapons and going to solicitors and building cases against each other, you’re going to war.
"People want to feel vindicated and to feel they’ve had their day in court because they feel hurt, but there is no justice for heartbreak or pain in a court: all there are are legal fees and increased animosity. I want to help people avoid going through the same difficult, torturous system that I went through.”
There will always be a need for the courts to resolve disputes where communications have totally broken down or there is active hostility between parties, but Ms Browne says that keeping conflict to a minimum and avoiding court is of benefit in many instances.
What does an amicable divorce look like in Michelle’s practice?
“A successful mediation is one where a couple are happy to agree terms to split. People willingly making a statement of means they are happy to share, that they are prepared to be honest. That they have similar expectations as to what the division of assets looks like, as to what parenting will look like.
"When it comes to parenting, we will ask about education, sports and extra-curricular stuff, welfare and so on. What bodes well is when we realise we can do it together, and that goes for property, pensions, finances. We come together and create a legally binding separation agreement, and they haven’t gone near the courts, and when the time is right, they then file for a divorce.”
This is the outcome Ms Browne sees frequently in her mediation practice, but her clients are a self-selecting group to the extent that they are communicating enough to have made the step of arranging mediation, and are walking into it in the hopes of an amicable resolution, she points out.
She would like to see the government do more to overhaul the divorce system, and says there are several steps that could be taken to reduce the cost and stress of divorces.
The first is a legal basis for pre-nuptial agreements.
“I believe we need prenuptial agreements in place in legislation, and I think it would drastically reduce the need to take cases against each other. We know divorce is on the increase, and yet we haven’t legislated for prenuptial agreements. It was discussed at one stage, many years ago, but it did not progress.”
She would also like to see clearer guidance on issues like maintenance and division of marital assets, and she would like to see costs being awarded as a deterrent in instances where someone is forced to court to get an ex-spouse to uphold a pre-existing access or maintenance agreement.
“It’s not rocket science to figure out guidelines for these things. All we need is co-operation from the courts, and a bit of willpower from our government. In my opinion, things like that could drastically reduce acrimonious cases, and all of the trauma and suffering that come with them.”
In the throes of conflict, we react because we’re in fight or flight mode. But when we react in anger, we do a lot of damage. A lot of hurt and trauma comes from arguments in the painful early days of a break-up and their echoes can impact later decisions. Try to recognise that in the early stages of a marital breakdown, you are at the beginning of a long process you’re going to have to get through. Try to take a breath, count to 10 and step back from lashing out. It’s hard when you’re hurting, but it’s worth it in the longer term.
Choose a professional mediator who will work with both parties as early as you can. Communication breaks down very quickly following a break-up, so you need to have a formalised method of communicating going forward.
If you have children, prioritise getting an interim parenting plan that you can both agree on in place as soon as possible. It’s often little things that people fall out over, and they can snowball and open old wounds. Never be tempted into saying negative things about your ex to your children. This can be really damaging and confusing for them and can make them feel like they’re being forced to choose sides.
There’s a reason that in airplane safety drills the air hostess tells you to put your own oxygen mask on first before attending to your children. You will be better able to support your children’s emotional needs when you are feeling balanced yourself, so prioritising your own self-care and recognising that you’re dealing with a trauma is really important.
The stages you go through in a break-up are stages of grief. You need support, but you need support that is constructive. People close to you might be tempted to weigh in with negative comments about your ex because they feel emotionally involved and protective of you, but try to rely on people who will just listen without judgement instead of people who will fan the flames of a dispute.
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