Did you wind up getting served with divorce papers last month? Don’t feel like the Lone Ranger. August is a peak time for divorce, researchers at the University of Washington discovered.
The sociologists conducted 15 years of research on divorces in Washington State. The two months out of the year where there is a marked uptick in the number of divorce petitions filed are March and August.
To determine if these trends also occurred in other states, the researchers looked at data from four states with similar divorce statutes — Florida, Arizona, Minnesota and Ohio. The four all have a disparate economic conditions and demographics.
Arizona, like Florida, suffered an economic blow during the recent recession and subsequent real estate collapse, while Ohio struggled with higher than average unemployment rates. The states’ differences notwithstanding, the biannual divorce seasonal prevailed.
The prime theory behind the timing of the filings is that those months typically follow times of holiday celebrations and summer vacations. For spouses teetering on the precipice of a split, all that togetherness and dashed expectations can be the straw that broke the camel’s back.
Instead of bonding them together, however, these periods can cause relationships to fracture even more. This can lead to one or the other party filing for divorce.
So where does that leave you? If your spouse had you served with a petition for divorce in August, you must respond quickly. Even if a divorce is the last thing that you want, you still must submit a legal response to the petition within a very short time frame.
Don’t delay another day. Seek the counsel of a Maricopa County family law attorney and learn what you must do to protect your rights to community property and access to your children.
Source: Medical News Today, “Divorce is seasonal, peaks following family vacations,” Hannah Nichols, accessed Sep. 01, 2017