The Traditional January Divorce Spike

The festive season is over and sadly, with it, are many marriages as the New Year always sees solicitors kept busy with new divorce cases.

It is not the most festive tale with which to start 2019, but it’s a message that needs to be told to those who experienced a far from joyous Christmas.

According to statistics, divorce solicitors see twice as many people as at any other time of year as soon as they return to work in the New Year and 2019 is set to be the same.

As a solicitor, I sometimes get asked why the festive period is so bad for relationship breakdown. Quite simply, it is because prolonged periods of leisure time when people are removed from normal work and family commitments is when they start to examine if they are really happy with their current situation.

Long before the Christmas tree went up, these people may have already been aware that something in their relationship is wrong.  There are often more arguments, where previously there had been simmering tensions as families are locked indoors for prolonged periods, with over indulgence on alcohol and general festive stresses, which can add fuel to the fire.

The festive season is also the time of year when an illicit affair becomes more difficult to hide because of family commitments, and if you then add in the financial and social pressures of a 21^st Century Christmas, then it can make for disaster.

Stripping away the Christmas gloss that the retailers promote, the fact is that just like general life, not all Christmases are created equally.

This all means that January is often the month when those couples that are already in strained relationships look to start a fresh chapter in their lives, meaning that one of the first calls they make in the New Year is to a family law firm.

Of course, we wish for everyone to have a great Christmas and New Year, but for those of you who didn’t due to relationship issues, we hope this article has given you comfort that you are not alone.

We hope that if you did not enjoy the best of times in 2018, that the next year will be gentler on you.