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The latest ISTAT report doesn’t leave much doubt about what’s happening in our society. The Italian Institute of Statistics survey makes it official: the number of divorces in Italy is increasing. This fact is even more remarkable if we consider that fewer and fewer couples are getting married.

This phenomenon concerns all age groups; there are more and more people who decide to end their marital relationship and go and live alone or with their children. In 1991 in Italy there were 376 thousand divorced couples, but today the number has practically quadrupled, reaching 1 million and 672 thousand.

The reasons behind this phenomenon

When considering the ISTAT data, it should be noticed that one of the reasons behind this phenomenon is the so-called “divorzio breve” law, that came into force in 2015. This law reduces the length of the divorce proceedings, allowing the couple to break the marital bond after just 6 months of separation.

Making the divorce proceedings easier by halving the time, had a significant impact on the numbers. As a matter of fact, in 2015 the divorce rates increased by 57% compared to the previous year.

The magnitude of this phenomenon has not only provided divorce lawyers with plenty of work, but also material for political controversies. The reference is of course to the Pillon bill, which has been causing considerable frenzy in the government. But there’s more.

The decision of the Corte di Cassazione

We shouldn’t forget that the issue of divorce returned to hover over Italian society in 2017, when the Corte di Cassazione’s sentence 11504 established that the financially weaker spouse no longer has right to alimony, in the event that he (or she) is self-sufficient and has a work contract.

At the time some divorce lawyers affirmed that this sentence brought a real jurisprudential upheaval, since the standard of living issue would soon raise important matters such as personal income, properties owned, the possibility to reside permanently in a dwelling and above all, the work situation.

Basically, the financially weaker spouse, in order to be eligible for alimony, should now prove that his/her unemployment would not derive from inertia, but from the practical impossibility of finding work.

According to the insiders, this sentence and the Pillon bill together could finally prove to be important antidotes to the exponential increase in divorce rates, as well as giving attorneys, and especially divorce lawyers, a notable amount of work.

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