Divorce Trends: the Centre for Mediation and Dispute Resolution’s Client Population

December 1, 2007
Written by CMDR Staff

For over twenty-five years, the Centre for Mediation & Dispute Resolution (CMDR) has been in the business of helping people reach agreements while preserving their ability to maintain future relationships.

Each year, we look back at our client population to identify discernible changes and trends.

In considering our separating, divorcing, and post-divorce clients at the end of Year 2007, we have observed the following trends:

• An increased number of clients who are unable to sell the marital home, despite price decreases and active involvement in expediting the sale.
• An increased number of clients who have decided to live together, after their divorce, because of an inability to sell the marital home – a decision that is emotionally draining on both parties.
• An increased number of clients who are seeking divorce after twenty-five, even thirty plus, years of marriage.
• An increased number of couples who are divorcing when one or both parties are retired.
• An increased number of individuals, who did not mediate their divorce with CMDR, came to us for post-divorce issues, including parenting and support issues and financing college education of their children.
• An increased number of couples who needed to mediate issues involved in long distant parenting.
• An increased number of clients who have been able to increase his or her income through changes in employment.
• An increased number of clients who both agreed to relocate to the same general area – sometimes quite far away.

Trends and changes evident in the divorcing or divorced population are indicative of the larger economic trends affecting Massachusetts in particular and the country as a whole. The war, the unpredictable stock market, the political climate, just to mention a few indices, influence when and how people divorce. Dips in the economy hit this population much harder since they are simultaneously financing two households and undergoing a host of other changes, both personal and economic. Mediation offers a way to work together collaboratively and creatively, thereby providing innovative solutions to difficult problems.