The number of people filing for divorce in Bartholomew County plummeted last year, contradicting some early predictions that being cooped up inside for weeks under pandemic lockdowns might lead to more couples opting to go splitsville.
Last year, divorce filings in Bartholomew County were down 21.3% compared to the year before, according to figures from the Bartholomew County Clerk’s Office. By comparison, local divorce filings ticked up 2% from 2018 to 2019.
The reasons for the decrease in the number of dissolved unions are likely related to the uncertainty of the pandemic and fears that splitting up would only worsen the financial havoc wrought by coronavirus-related shutdowns, furloughs and layoffs, according to experts, attorneys and marriage counselors.
In other words, fewer divorce filings does not necessarily mean couples are happy together, but rather that the pandemic might have caused those on the brink of divorce to reconsider — at least temporarily.
“I think, in the hierarchy of needs, it was, ‘We need to have shelter and food,’” said Shari Long, a family law attorney at Columbus-based law firm Thomasson, Thomasson, Long & Guthrie P.C. “People were afraid they weren’t going to have enough toilet paper. The fear level of the unknown of, ‘what could we not have and even though you might be my enemy, we’re going to get our kids through this to the other side of this uncertainty.’ I think it kind of triggered that survival instinct to say, ‘You know, maybe you’re not my choice, but we’re stuck together for the foreseeable future.’”
Currently, comprehensive national statistics on divorce during the pandemic is not available, but the drop in local divorce filings mirrors similar reports that have already surfaced in several states, The Associated Press reported.
One recent study by researchers at Bowling Green State University found there were more than 16,000 fewer divorces last year in Arizona, Florida, Missouri, New Hampshire and Oregon “than would have been expected based on March through June counts in the prior two years.”
In Oregon, divorces in from March to December last year were down about 24% from those months in 2019, according to wire reports. In Florida, for the same months, divorces were down 20%.
In Los Angeles, divorce filings dropped 17.3% from March 2020 to this past February compared to the same period the year before, according to The New York Times.
Many experts have pointed to rising economic uncertainty during the pandemic as a potential reason why divorces appear to be on the decline in many parts of the country, according to wire reports.
During the spring last year, unemployment rates soared to levels not seen since the Great Depression as the coronavirus swept across the country and forced countless businesses to shut down.
Schools and day cares also shut down for extended periods of time, adding additional burdens on parents trying to juggle work and child care.
In May 2020, the jobless rate in Bartholomew County reached 17.2%, or nearly 1 in 6 residents, according to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development. Local food banks reported a surge in demand.
And on top of that, getting divorced is not cheap.
“There was job loss and fear, and it was unknown what the future would bring and people had to quarantine together and pull together to get through that,” Long said. “My opinion is that caused a lot of people to say, ‘Now’s not the time to divide everything we have up and to live independently and have our kids shuttled back and forth in the middle of a pandemic.”
“You always end up with less in a divorce,” she said. “So is (a pandemic) the time to divide up everything you own and divide up your children and also pay for it?”
Another potential reason for the decline, according to attorneys and marriage counselors across the country, is that access to courts for civil cases was severely curtailed in many states, particularly during the pandemic’s early stages, according to wire reports.
In Bartholomew County, many hearings and trials were delayed due to the pandemic.
“When people would come in and talk with me, especially early on in the pandemic, we weren’t having hearings,” Long said. “Non-emergent cases weren’t being heard, and when they were going to be heard was unknown. So I would tell them, ‘We’re in a brave new world right now. We don’t know. We could file the divorce today, and you might not get a hearing in front of a judge for four or five months.’”
However, a rebound in divorce filings may on the horizon as life gradually returns to normal, experts say.
But so far, divorce filings in Bartholomew County from January to April of this year were still about 31% lower than they were during the same time period in 2019.
[sc:pullout-title pullout-title=”Pull Quote” ][sc:pullout-text-begin]
“You always end up with less in a divorce. So is (a pandemic) the time to divide up everything you own and divide up your children and also pay for it?”
— Shari Long, family law attorney at Columbus-based law firm Thomasson, Thomasson, Long & Guthrie P.C.
[sc:pullout-text-end]
