ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to provide a general overview of trends and patterns in divorce in the developed world, focusing especially on the interaction between legal and behavioural aspects of union dissolution. In any event, the advent of same-sex marriage has been followed by the advent of same-sex divorce. The liberalization of divorce and a surge in divorce rates are widely pointed to as more or less universal developments in the industrialized world in the final third of the twentieth century. The southern European region of Portugal, Spain, Italy, Malta and Greece was somewhat slow to introduce divorce and initially went for more restrictive legislation. The combined effect of undercounts of divorce and age-effects on divorce rates is uncertain but has been shown to be large at least in the significant case represented by the United States. The United States is one such jurisdiction where the historical and continuing extent of other routes of exit is relatively well documented.
