A total of 16,319 marriages were divorced in Austria in 2019, 3,947 of them in Vienna. According to lawyers, the big divorce boom is expected to follow this year.
Statistics Austria published divorce figures for 2019 on Wednesday. 16,319 marriages throughout Austria were legally divorced. This is only a slight increase (+0.1 percent) compared to the previous year. At the same time 121 registered partnerships were dissolved, 23 more than in 2018 (+23.5 percent).
Highest divorce rate in Lower Austria
“About four out of ten marriages in Austria end up before the divorce judge sooner or later. In 2019, the overall decision rate of 40.7 percent was slightly below the level of the two previous years (41.0 percent), but well below the previous record of 49.5 percent in 2007,” explains Statistics Austria Director General Tobias Thomas.
Across Austria, the overall decision rate in 2019 was 40.7 percent. Of 16,319, just under 4,000 are in Vienna. After Lower Austria (44.4 percent), Vienna had the second highest divorce rate (44.1 percent). Vorarlberg and Burgenland (42.9 percent each) and Carinthia (41.2 percent) were in the other places. In Salzburg (38.3 percent), Upper Austria (37.8 percent) and Styria (37.3 percent) the overall decision rate was below average. At 34.9%, the overall decision rate was lowest in Tyrol, as it has been since 2017.
86.3 percent of all divorces in the previous year were by mutual agreement. The median duration of marriages divorced in 2019 was 10.5 years, slightly below the 2018 level (10.6 years).
“Summer is a strong time for divorces”
Statistics Austria did not yet have any data available for the year 2020 so far. During the lockdown period, no divorces were granted due to the limited court operations. As reported by “Radio Wien”, the number of divorce suits filed at the district court Favoriten was 18 percent lower in the first half of the year.
The attorney Clemens Gärner from the Viennese family law firm Gärner Perl still expects a divorce boom due to the corona crisis. “The summer is in itself a very strong time for divorces. However, this summer we have registered an increase in the divorce rate by another 30 percent”, Gärner emphasized. Among them, however, are divorces now being initiated by people who were planning to get divorced before the corona crisis.
- Hector Pascua, Source; Statistik Austria, with reports from heute.at
- Picture: stockilyapp.com
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