A Timeline of Divorce in America

Divorce was once uncommon and highly stigmatized in the United States. Until the introduction of no-fault divorce in the 1960s and ’70s, states typically required one partner to prove the other’s misconduct by the other in a costly, complex process that often favored men. 

Attitudes—and laws—changed as the institution of marriage and gender roles have evolved. A July 2025 assessment by the Institute for Family Studies calculated that roughly 40 percent of first marriages end in divorce.

Here’s what American divorce looked like from the colonial era to the 21st century.

Before the late 18th century, the concept of marriage was “more of a work and property arrangement than a love arrangement,” says Stephanie Coontz, director of research and public education at the Council on Contemporary Families and professor emerita at The Evergreen State College in Washington state.

For the upper class, marriage was a way to combine fortunes and forge social, political and military alliances. For the middle and lower classes, it was “how you began a business,” says Coontz, who also wrote Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage. “That’s why sons of bakers married daughters of bakers.”

When English colonists settled in America in the 1600s, divorce in their homeland was a “rare privilege” granted primarily to the upper classes and men, according to Journal of American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. In the southern colonies, which followed the Church of England, legislatures could grant divorces only by passing a special act.

The northern colonies were “more liberal,” Coontz says. In the Massachusetts Bay Colony, courts (rather than legislatures) began hearing divorce cases in the mid-1600s, with the most prevalent grounds being desertion, adultery, incest and extreme cruelty. Annulments were also an option in cases of male impotence and bigamy. At the time, the colonies that became Massachusetts and Connecticut each approved roughly one divorce a year.

After the United States gained its independence in 1776, getting a divorce still usually required an act of the state legislature—an arduous process that few successfully completed. Gradually, states began passing laws that shifted this power to the newly constituted courts, which heard divorce cases on very limited grounds and issued rulings based on evidence of misconduct.

Such was the case in New York. A 1787 law legalized divorce in situations involving adultery, and a guilty husband could be ordered to pay alimony and child care costs. In New Jersey, courts heard divorce cases on the grounds of adultery, consanguinity (sharing a common ancestor), desertion for seven years or bigamy. The state could grant divorce “from bed and board,” a legal separation that didn’t fully dissolve the marriage, only in cases of extreme cruelty by either spouse.

Because marriage laws of the era gave men control over finances and property, husbands more frequently filed for divorce than wives, who were often left with nothing. Many divorced women moved in with relatives or found low-paying work as servants—the exception being wealthy socialites who could afford to live on their own and pay prohibitively high legal fees.

“Under the old patriarchal family system, women didn’t have any options,” says Steven Ruggles, a regents professor and director of the Institute for Social Research and Data Innovation at the University of Minnesota. “There were no jobs for women that would be sustainable.”

Attitudes in southern states also began shifting by the late 1700s, partly due to England’s growing acceptance of divorce. The first to grant a divorce was Maryland in 1790. North Carolina legalized divorce on narrow grounds in 1794, while South Carolina barred divorce altogether into the late 19th century.

Regardless of who was at fault, divorce was considered a “social death sentence” for women well into the 1800s. This stigma persisted even as they gained more rights to own property and as more states adopted divorce laws. 

Especially in the West, some states, starting with Indiana, instituted more lenient residency requirements to file for divorce. People flocked to these so-called “divorce havens,” with the sole purpose of ending their marriages. 

Sioux Falls, South Dakota, became a common divorce destination in the late 19th century. One could live in the state just 90 days before filing for divorce. In the 1930s, the city of Reno, Nevada, became the “divorce capital of the world” after the state dropped its residency requirement to an unprecedented six weeks to fuel its economy during the Great Depression. By comparison, a spouse had to live in Massachusetts for five years before filing.

The popular divorce hotspots also typically had more liberal grounds for divorce, says Hendrik Hartog, a professor emeritus at Princeton University and author of Man and Wife in America: A History. 

“Legally, all you had to do was assert marital breakdown or a form of psychological abuse or something like that,” Hartog says.

Considering the costs and complexities of a legal divorce, some couples chose to informally separate and live apart, Hartog says.

“Many of those [cases] were about men pursuing economic gain by moving West, moving wherever, and leaving the wife behind,” Hartog says. Some husbands—and also wives—even remarried without divorcing their first spouse.

Divorce rates dropped during the Great Depression—but they soared starting around 1946, the year after World War II ended. Couples who hastily married at the start of the war suddenly realized their incompatibility. Others faced strained relationships due to the stresses of deployment or emotional challenges many vets faced when they returned. Wives left husbands for men they met while their spouses were overseas, and husbands left wives for women they met in Europe.

Plus, women continued joining the workforce in record numbers, and new economic opportunities made it easier for them to escape bad marriages. 

Divorce rates accelerated by the 1960s and ’70s as some Americans began questioning traditional views of marriage amid the rise of the counterculture movement. 

In September 1969, California became the first state to legalize no-fault divorce, allowing couples to separate due to “irreconcilable differences” without placing blame. As more states followed suit, getting divorced became easier and less expensive, Ruggles says. 

Divorce rates peaked around 1979 at 22.8 divorces per 1,000 married women, according to the National Center for Family & Marriage Research. New York became the last state to adopt no-fault divorce laws in 2010.

By 2023, there were 14.4 divorces per 1,000 married women. Despite the overall decline, rates have risen among people ages 65 and older in a phenomenon known as “gray divorce,” which began in the 1990s.

“As active life expectancy rises, and women and men do have opportunities [to meet someone] after 50 and 60, they’re less likely to stay in a bad marriage,” Coontz says.

Overall, younger adults are less likely than they once were to get divorced and are also marrying at older ages. And in record numbers, many are choosing to never marry at all.