Divorce rate declines to all-time low in Kansas

The divorce rate in Kansas has dropped to its lowest level in half a century, since the state began keeping annual records in 1966.

The divorce rate last year dropped to 2.6 per 1,000 persons, the Kansas Department of Health and Environment said. There were 7,198 divorces in 2016.

The Kansas divorce rate has never been that low.

For much of the 1970s and 1980s, according to health department records, the divorce rate was above 5 per every 1,000 population, and there were more than 12,000 divorces in the state year after year.

The marriage rate in Kansas has also reached historic lows, an annual state report says. It rose a bit in 2016 but set a record low in 2015 and in 2013 at 6 marriages per 1,000 adults.

No one is sure why these numbers have dropped.

One reason may be that people are getting married later.

“Fewer people are getting married in their late teens and early 20s,” said Kathleen Reeves, a family law attorney in Wichita. “When people marry that young, they are often, in my opinion, not really ready for marriage, or not mature enough to understand what they are getting into.”

Others theorize people are just skipping marriage altogether.

“Fewer and fewer people are getting married in our country, for the first time in our history,” said Scott Mann, an Overland Park family law attorney. “But people are still living together, still having children.”

Nationally, the same thing has happened with both the divorce and marriage rates — a gradual decline.

Why the rates went down

Nationally, there are theories about the declines in divorce and marriage rates since the 1990s: Birth control changed the dynamics, for example. Cohabiting, once widely stigmatized, is now embraced by many couples.

Common-law marriages don’t get recorded by KDHE and other state trackers.

“People have a lot more choices than they did years ago,” said George Sevick, who runs a Catholic Charities family counseling center in Wichita. He’s noticed that many of his clients in the past 10 years have become more choosy about those with whom they form a bond.

“I had a client recently who was just exiting a long-term relationship. She has a career and ambitions. ‘I don’t want to be with some loser,’ she told me. She wants to meet someone who is going somewhere.”

Part of the reason the marriage rate has dropped might be that people now can do many more things to check out possible mates, Sevick said.

“And you can take this right down to the apps on your phone,” he said.

“Paper or plastic? Religious goals. Political affiliations. Does this other person, like, run in 5-K races? Should we have a lot more bicycles all over Wichita, or just cars?”

It’s still good for lawyers

Business still booms for divorce lawyers.

Why?

Clients are fighting each other more.

“Sadly, there are more disputes now these days over child custody, child support,” said Reeves, the Wichita lawyer. “I’ve seen a big increase in paternity cases, for example.

Beyond that, she said, there’s more litigation, for many reasons.

“Many fathers, who used to play a lesser role in their children’s lives after divorce, now want to play a greater or an equal role. And there are more situations where people get divorced, and then two years down the road, one party is more settled, and got a house, and now that person wants to change the agreement.”

“There’s a trend, unfortunately, to fight more over the children,” Mann said. “That’s increasing, try as I might to discourage people from getting children in the middle of a fight.”

More addictions

Sevick and the lawyers also have noticed: While the divorce rate declined, they see many more reasons now why people divorce.

Adultery and addiction to alcohol were common marriage breakers when he started 17 years ago, Mann said. Now it’s those two, plus gambling, heroin, opioids, marijuana (pot is much stronger now than in decades past).

And more:

▪  “With porn, it’s not just watching that hurts a marriage: It’s the hiding of it, keeping it secret,” Reeves said. “But porn is also a big intimacy-killer. Do you want to look at your spouse, age 55, or would you rather look on the internet and have this fantasy with a 25-year-old?”

▪ Social media, Part I: “Facebook lets people connect with an old flame from high school or other parts of their past,” Reeves said. “This has spawned more divorces. It’s so easy to get on a computer and talk to someone. And in your mind, they are what they were 15 years ago, and you don’t see that, how they’ve changed … so it’s a fantasy.”

▪ Social media, Part II: “I’ve seen cases where, let’s say, I post a picture on Facebook, and somebody, a female, ‘liked’ it,” Sevick said. “So my wife might ask, ‘Why did they post that “like” on your photo?’ Some of these apps we have can cause problems like that. If you use GPS on your phone, your spouse can watch wherever you go, and later ask: ‘How come it took you 45 minutes to go home? It’s a 20-minute drive.’ ”

Mann has noticed these causes, too, in his Overland Park office. But he said divorce always has multiple causes.

“Most marriages can weather one problem, like financial trouble. But if you add another issue — adultery, or somebody’s addiction, or a physical or mental illness, that begins to compound things.”

It’s the little things

Small things can repair or save marriages.

Sevick runs Cana Counseling, a service with five family counselors, offered by Catholic Charities of Wichita. Sevick and his counselors served 709 clients in 3,132 therapy sessions in fiscal year 2016.

“I see couples come in who think they’ve blown the engine and there’s no hope,” Sevick said.

Sevick tries to help them, and not only because the Catholic Church in general believes in marriage, forgiveness and reconciliation.

“We ask whether it’s worth getting divorced,” he said. “In this economy, if you think about it, it’s really hard on some people. You’re splitting up your wealth. For many people, it’s really difficult financially to be on your own.”

If there are kids involved, that’s a big incentive to stay married, he said. “I am not sure I would want to be with my kids only half the time,” he said.

“So, we try to help people by helping them redefine what commitment means,” he said.

“We live in a world now where everybody sometimes seems to tell us that we can be happy all the time.

“That’s not really true. Past generations, like those who weathered the Depression, got through really tough times, for example, and many stayed together.

“And I’ve encountered people where they say, ‘No, I am one-and-done, and I’m not going to trust him anymore.’ That’s not a way to think, if you want a long-term relationship.

“So we tell people, ‘You don’t want to have a premature divorce.’

“We tell people that we know we are all going to maybe be deeply hurt by those we trust and love. But we ask: Can you try to keep working on it. Is it fixable?

“We point out that who you are now, that’s now who you were when you both said ‘I do.’ When I married my own wife 22 years ago, I had no college degree. Now I have a master’s, and I’m doing a completely different job. People have to learn to evolve to changes like that.”

How to be happy

Head off divorce if you can, Sevick said.

“Make love every day,” Sevick said. “And by that I don’t mean necessarily physical. I mean show you love and care for them. Be intentional. Have a date night. Turn off the cellphone. Find an activity to share. You can be apart and still fire off a text, ‘Hey I was thinking about you.’

“I’ve known (military) deployed couples, for example, who were split up for many months, separated by oceans and continents, and yet found a way to keep it all going.

“And I’ve known couples living under the same roof who had it all fall apart.”

This story was originally published June 26, 2017 at 7:08 AM with the headline "Divorce rate declines to all-time low in Kansas."