Germany’s Divorce Rate Remains Stable, Same-Sex Couples See Increase
The German Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) has reported that in 2024, approximately 129,300 marriages ended in divorce, a figure that remains close to the previous year’s level, with a slight increase of 0.3 percent or 329 divorces. This marks the lowest divorce rate since German reunification.
The long-term trend shows a decline in the number of divorces, with the exception of a few years, since 2003, a drop of 39.6 percent in 2024. The number of marriages has also been declining in the long run, with a decrease of 3.3 percent or 11,800 fewer marriages in 2024 compared to the previous year. Of the 349,200 marriages in 2024, 340,400 were between a man and a woman and 8,800 were between same-sex partners.
More than half of the divorced couples, 50.8 percent or around 65,700, had minor children. Of these, 48 percent had one child, 40 percent had two and 12 percent had three or more. This continues the long-term trend of a decline in the proportion of divorces with children and an increase in the proportion with two or more children. In total, around 111,000 minor children were affected by their parents’ divorce in 2024.
Most of the divorced couples, 80.5 percent, had been separated for at least a year before the divorce, according to the data from the Federal Office. Divorces after a three-year separation accounted for 18.5 percent and in these cases, it is assumed that the marriage has irretrievably broken down. In 1 percent of the cases, the divorce was governed by foreign law or was in the process of being regulated before a one-year separation or less. The average length of marriage for the divorced couples in 2024 was 14 years and 8 months and in around 21,200 or 16.4 percent of the cases, the divorce occurred in the year of the silver wedding anniversary or later. This proportion was between 10 and 11 percent in the 1990s, increased until the mid-2010s and has since remained at a similar level.
In 90 percent of the divorces, the divorce petition was submitted with the consent of the spouse or spouses in 2024, while 6 percent of the petitions were jointly submitted and in the remaining 4 percent, one of the spouses did not agree to the petition.
According to Destatis, around 1,500 same-sex couples got divorced in 2024, a number that is about 200 or 18.1 percent more than in the previous year. Same-sex divorces accounted for 1.2 percent of all divorces in 2024.
Same-sex couples who live in a registered life partnership can end it by annulment rather than divorce and in 2024, around 500 annulments of life partnerships were recorded, a number that is about 100 or 19.6 percent less than in the previous year. This marks the fifth consecutive year of a decline in the number of annulments. Since the introduction of “marriage for all” in October 2017, no new life partnerships can be established in Germany and there has been an increasing shift from annulments to divorces.