DoubleTake/Ann Marie HourihaneIt is sad but true that many Irish couples are divorcing after having spent decades in misery, hanging on until the kids are gone
It was surprising to learn that the majority of divorces obtained in Cork courts are sought by people who have been married for between 21 and 25 years. Real divorce - the sort that lets you get married again - is still so new here that the stereotype of the Irish divorce is itself young.
According to the latest figures released by the Courts Service, which are due out next week, the average waiting time for divorce proceedings is now as low as three months (Carrick-on-Shannon, Ennis, Castlebar). In Dublin, uncontested divorces can take as little as four to six weeks, but uncontested and contested divorces for Dublin are combined in these figures, giving an average waiting time of five months. In Wexford, the wait can be anything from 18 months to two years.
The lawyers will tell you that one reason for the high rate of settlement, and even for the age profile of those divorcing, might just be the scandalous delays that pertained in having cases brought to court until recently, because of the shortage of judges outside Dublin. Insiders in other legal areas say that some solicitors are outrageously slow. Then there is wrangling between the divorcing parties over disclosure of private matters, and the healthy horror of court. The reality might be that if you were not a candidate for a grey divorce when you started, you will certainly be grey by the time you are finished.
According to the new figures from the Courts Service, the delay in getting to court in Cork is between three and six months. The October survey appears in the second edition of Family Law Matters. The first edition was published in spring. Its cover was a painting, torn down the middle, of a nice-looking couple at a table. The woman in the picture seems to have got custody of the cafetière - which will strike you as either uncannily accurate or appallingly patronising, depending on your point of view.
The stereotype of those thought to be most vulnerable to divorce is surely the hard-working young couples with matching business suits, a double commute and not a moment to call their own. But no. Perhaps young couples are just too exhausted to divorce. According to this survey of the family law cases heard in October 2006 in Cork Circuit Court, today's divorces are most likely to be granted to people in possession of reading glasses and a packed lunch.
And this is sad. It is one thing to imagine a young couple who have made a regrettable but brief mistake. It is another to imagine people who are divorcing after having spent decades in misery, hanging on until the kids are gone. Now the time has come to dispose of the house in which two people have been living separate lives for decades. Is this what happened to the Cork couples? While I apologise to anyone who is 50 - and indeed, I find the term quite offensive myself - in the US this is called "grey divorce". And they've come up with a couple of reasons for the slow-burn marital breakdown as well. One marriage partner has been struggling with questions about his or her sexuality and comes out as gay. One marriage partner is alcoholic, or drug-addicted or chronically depressed and the other partner just cannot hack it any more. And then there are all those cases where one partner is just bloody impossible and the other partner's soul has solidified through having to put up with the fact that their spouse is distinctly - though not certifiably - bonkers. I added that last one in myself. It is a surprisingly common syndrome that has yet to be named.
Then of course, there is the particularly Irish situation in which a spouse (usually female) was deserted in her youth and left to raise young children on her own while Bozo hit the nightclubs and very possibly the boat to England.
Decades later these women find themselves a solicitor to get things sorted.
In the US, one of the key factors in marital breakdown has been found to be the age of the now divorcing couple when they got married in the first place. Briefly, the younger they were at the time of their marriage the more likely they are to get divorced.
This age-at-the-time-marriage factor is one of the reasons mooted for the fact that divorce in the US is more prevalent in the conservative, Republican-voting Bible-Belt states than in more liberal states. Young people in the born again Christian, so-called red states are much less likely to have sex before marriage (allegedly) than young people in the liberal, blue states.
If that connection is maintained over here, it presents a tricky cultural question. Because in modern Ireland it is the older generations who got married young - in order to have sex, poor things - and the younger generation that is pushing up the average age of marriage, by delaying for the three-decade, 100 per cent mortgage. That is the reckless youth of today.