Marriages last 14 years on average in Brazil
October 31, 2018 10h00 AM | Last Updated: November 01, 2018 10h06 AM
In 2007, the average length of a civil marriage could be estimated at 17 years. Ten years later, the average time between the date of the wedding and of the divorce decree fell to 14 years, according to the IBGE Vital Statistics 2017.
The survey shows that between 2016 and 2017 the number of registered unions decreased by 2.3% and the number of divorces increased by 8.3%. The survey manager, Klívia Oliveira, showed that this is the second consecutive year with increase in the number of divorces and decrease in marriages. "The ratio is three marriages for each divorce," she says. The exception is same-sex marriages, which, although representing a little more than 0.5% of the registered unions, keep growing, with a 10% increase in 2017.
The new dynamics of Brazilian families can also be figured out from the IBGE survey. Klívia highlights the significant increase in the percentage of judicial divorces with joint custody: this custody modality increased from 7.5% in 2014 to 20.9% in 2017. "As of 2014, the law states that custodies should be preferably shared, unless there is some particular reason," comments the researcher. However, women are still the major custodian of most divorce records. "This scenario is changing," says Klívia. "We realized that children no longer prevent couples from getting a divorce."
