Marriage advice amid fears that stay at home orders could negatively impact marriages

PHOENIX - With a stay-at-home orders in effect in Arizona, that mean couples are spending more time at home, and that has led to concerns that America's divorce rate could go higher.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Arizona's divorce rate is 3.7 per 1,000 people, based on 2018 estimates.

As people are being asked to remain at home, there are some words of advice for couples.

"Anybody who has had a good marriage and had a crappy last three weeks should think long and hard before coming in and hiring a divorce attorney," said Douglas Gardner.

Divorce attorneys are preparing for a surge in cases, like the ones Valley attorneys saw in 2008, in the aftermath of a housing market crash.

"As call volume went down dramatically for six months and attorneys kinda started thinking 'well. maybe nobody’s gonna be able to move forward to get a divorce ever again," said Gardner. "After a few months, the dam burst. You know people were putting duct tape down the middle of the living room to say ‘you stay on that side, I’ll stay on this side.’ Or the refrigerator ‘this is your side and this is my side.'"

"For better or for worse" mean different things currently, particularly for young people. According to a new study, more than half of married millennials see a divorce coming when the COVID-19 crisis subsides, but Gardners says they will have to get in line.

"Courts have been delaying every case that was scheduled in the last half of March and all of April," said Gardner. "So in addition to all the big uptick in cases that are going to be filed, there’s going to be the backlog of cases of existing cases, and family law attorneys are going to be very, very busy through the rest of the year."

To avoid going separate ways after not being allowed to go anywhere, Gardner says people should focus on the basics.

"Learning to see things from your spouses perspective, learning how to communicate, learning how to -- If you have expectations that are not being met, communicating those expectations to your spouse," said Gardner.

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