{"id":293070,"date":"2019-01-11T10:38:07","date_gmt":"2019-01-11T08:38:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=293070"},"modified":"2019-01-11T10:38:07","modified_gmt":"2019-01-11T08:38:07","slug":"heres-why-more-south-africans-are-getting-divorced-and-their-age-when-they-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wealth\/293070\/heres-why-more-south-africans-are-getting-divorced-and-their-age-when-they-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Here&#8217;s why more South Africans are getting divorced &#8211; and their age when they do"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Legal expert Von Ludwig says that South Africans are in a state of disharmony about money following years of economic stagnancy in the country.<\/p>\n<p>Talking to Bruce Whitfield on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.702.co.za\/articles\/333495\/the-nuts-and-bolts-of-divorcing-in-south-africa\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Radio 702<\/a>, family law attorney Von Ludwig said that we as South Africans live in a society of fear.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Of course the first place that it affects, is at home. Our matrimonial harmony is not great in this country.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are also living very much in a consumer world where if you don&#8217;t like something, you can dispose of it and get another one. People don&#8217;t stick to their marriages as they did before.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The most recent stats for South Africa, published in May 2018 showed a slight uptick in marriages of 0.6% in marriages year on year, at 139,512 civil marriages in SA.<\/p>\n<p>The highest number of marriages was registered in Gauteng 36,413 (26.1%) followed by KwaZulu-Natal 21,440 (15.4%) and Western Cape 20,565 (14.7%).<\/p>\n<p>The report, by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.statssa.gov.za\/?page_id=1854&amp;PPN=P0307&amp;SCH=7344\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">StatsSA<\/a>, focused on civil marriages, customary marriages and civil unions that were registered in 2016 in the South African national marriage registration systems maintained by the Department of Home Affairs (DHA).<\/p>\n<p>This includes trends in the number of marriages and unions as well as demographic and other dynamics among married partners.<\/p>\n<p>The median age of bridegrooms remain unchanged at <strong>36 years<\/strong> whilst the median age of brides increased by a year from 31 years to<strong> 32 years<\/strong>. The majority of bridegrooms (81.5%) and brides (86.4%) had not been married before.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Divorce<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The report also highlighted the number of divorces granted by the Department of Justice and Constitutional Development.<\/p>\n<p>It noted that there was a 0.3% increase in divorces to 25,260 divorces granted from 25,326 before.<\/p>\n<p>The median age of males and females remained the same with <strong>44 years<\/strong> and <strong>40 years<\/strong> respectively. Of these about 51.1% of divorces were filed by women while men filed 34.2% divorce cases.<\/p>\n<p>While the statistics from the annual divorce data do not give a comprehensive picture of the number of marriages ending in divorce, the report found that the largest number (26.9%) of divorces were for marriages <strong>that lasted between five and nine years<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>This group is followed by marriages that lasted between ten and fourteen years (19.6%) and marriages that lasted for less than five years (17.5%).<\/p>\n<p>Statistically this means that about 44.4% of divorces came from marriages that did not celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary.<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<p><strong>Read: <a href=\"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/finance\/286272\/make-sure-these-divorce-mistakes-dont-cost-you\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Make sure these divorce mistakes don\u2019t cost you<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Legal expert Von Ludwig says that South Africans are in a state of disharmony about money following years of economic stagnancy in the country.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":103639,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9880],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-293070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wealth","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293070"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293070\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":293082,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293070\/revisions\/293082"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/103639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}