Marriages and Divorces, Australia methodology

This publication contains statistics for Australia on marriages that were registered, and divorces that were granted absolute. From 2022, the number of tables reported for Marriages and Divorces has been reduced. 

Up to 2002 and from 2008, data for marriages and divorces has been published in Marriages and Divorces, Australia (see 'View all releases').

For marriages from 2003 to 2007, data was published in Marriages, Australia.

For divorces from 2002 to 2007, data was published in Divorces, Australia.

The Marriage Act 1961 came into full operation on 1 September 1961. Under the Act, marriages may be solemnised by a minister of religion registered as an authorised celebrant, by a district registrar or by other persons authorised by the attorneys-general. Notice of the intended marriage must be given to the celebrant at least one month, and not more than 18 months, before the marriage. Under certain circumstances, the time can be shortened. A celebrant must lodge an official certificate of the marriage for registration to a district registrar in the state or territory in which the marriage took place within 14 days.

Amendments to the Marriage Act 1961 came into effect on 9 December 2017 to reflect that marriage in Australia is not determined by sex or gender. The Notice of Intended Marriage (NOIM) form has been updated to reflect these changes.

The minimum age at which persons are legally free to marry in Australia is 18 years. Persons between the age of 16 years and 18 years may marry with parental or guardian consent and an order from a judge or magistrate. Any two persons under the age of 18 years may not marry each other.

Under the Family Law Act 1975, the irretrievable breakdown of marriage is the only basis on which a divorce is granted. This ground is established by the couple having lived apart for 12 months or more, and there being no reasonable likelihood of reconciliation. Applications for nullity of a marriage under Family Law legislation must be on the grounds that the marriage is void because of failure to meet a legal requirement e.g., one party was already lawfully married to another person. There is no provision for judicial separation under Family Law legislation.

Successful applicants for a divorce under Family Law in Australia are initially granted a decree nisi, which is a court order stating the date a marriage will end unless good reason is produced not to grant the divorce. This becomes absolute after one month unless it is rescinded, appealed against, or the court has not declared its satisfaction that proper arrangements have been made for the welfare of children involved. Data in this publication is based on the date the divorce was granted absolute.

Following amendments to the Marriage Act 1961 in late 2017, couples can now access the Australian divorce system regardless of the sex or gender of the parties involved. Divorces of couples of the same gender are included in the counts of all divorces presented in the data tables.

The registration of marriages is the responsibility of individual state and territory Registrars of Births, Deaths and Marriages. This information is provided to the ABS by individual Registrars for coding and compilation into aggregate statistics shown in this publication.

Divorce statistics are compiled by the ABS from information supplied by the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia and the Family Court of Western Australia. Prior to 2021, all data was sourced from the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia.

This publication draws extensively on information provided by the state and territory Registrars of Births, Deaths and Marriages, the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia and the Family Court of Western Australia. Their continued cooperation is very much appreciated: without it, the wide range of vital statistics published by the ABS would not be available. Information received by the ABS is treated in strict confidence as required by the Census and Statistics Act 1905.

The scope of the collection is all marriages registered by the Registrar of Births, Deaths and Marriages in each Australian state and territory.

Marriages registered on Norfolk Island since 1 July 2016 are included in this publication. This is due to the introduction of the Norfolk Island Legislation Amendment Act 2015. Norfolk Island registered marriages are included in statistics for New South Wales and in Australian national totals. Marriages registered on Norfolk Island prior to 1 July 2016 were not in scope for Australian marriage statistics.

Visiting overseas residents who marry in Australia are included in these statistics. Marriages of Australian residents that take place overseas are not included in these statistics.

Coverage of marriage statistics in Australia is considered complete as all marriages that take place in Australia are recorded as legal events.

The number of marriages should be recorded and reported as those which occurred within a given reference period, such as a calendar year. However, there can be delays in the registration of marriages with the state or territory registries and so not all marriages are registered in the year that they occur. There may also be further delays to the ABS receiving notification of the marriage from the registries due to processing or data transfer lags. Therefore, every marriage record will have a date on which:

• the marriage is celebrated (the date of occurrence)
• the marriage is registered with the state and territory registry (date of registration)
• the registered marriage is lodged with the ABS and deemed in scope (reference year).

Registered marriages for each reference year includes:

• marriages registered in the calendar year and received by the ABS in the calendar year or by the end of January of the following year
• marriages registered in the years prior to the calendar year but not received by the ABS until the calendar year or by the end of January of the following year, provided that these marriages have not been included in any statistics from an earlier period.

Except for statistics published by occurrence, data in this publication is presented by reference year.

The scope of marriages by occurrence includes any received in the following year for marriages celebrated in the calendar year. Totals will differ for data by reference year and year of occurrence.

The scope of the collection is all divorces granted (decree made absolute) in Australia in a calendar year.

Coverage of divorce statistics in Australia is considered complete as all divorces granted are recorded legal decisions.

Any reference to separations in this publication refers only to separations which have resulted in divorce. Data referencing separations should not be considered representative of all separations in Australia.

A range of socio-demographic data is available from the marriages and divorces collection. Data items in this publication are based on standard ABS classifications. For some data items, small modifications have been made to these classifications to better align with how the data have been captured at the administrative source, and to enhance the value of the information collected. The classifications used, and any modifications, are detailed below.

The Marriage Act 1961 was amended in December 2017 so that marriage in Australia is not determined by sex or gender. As a result, a question collecting data on sex of marrying parties on the Notice of Intended Marriage (NOIM) was added to include response options of “Male”, “Female” and “X” (where “X” is described as referring to indeterminate, intersex or unspecified).

In September 2021, this question was further revised to:

• become optional
• collect gender (instead of sex)
• include ”Male”, ”Female” and ”Non-binary” as response options.

Applications for divorce ask for gender with response options of “Male”, “Female” and “X” (indeterminate, intersex or unspecified).

Male marriages/divorces of the same gender are where both parties have reported their gender as male. This is compared with male same-sex marriage/divorce data for previous years.

Female marriages/divorces of the same gender are where both parties have reported their gender as female. This is compared with female same-sex marriage/divorce data for previous years.

Marriages including a person of non-binary gender include relationships where one or both parties have reported their gender as non-binary. Non-binary gender is not reported for previous years.

Non-binary gender is not provided as an option on divorce application forms. The number of divorces where a party identified their gender as ”X” is small and is not identified separately in output.

From 2022, there is a significant reduction in tables published for marriages and divorces statistics. Customised tables with more detail may be available with a paid data consultancy. Data available includes previous marital status, type of marriage celebrant, country of birth and relative birthplace.

The ABS does not have details of marriage locations or the usual residence of married couples. Additional detail is not available for divorces data.

Restrictions put in place during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic had a direct impact on marriages in 2020 and 2021. A range of public health orders included lockdowns, travel restrictions, social distancing requirements, size and density limits on gatherings, mask mandates, and restrictions on social activities such as singing and dancing.

Across 2020 and 2021 the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the usual seasonal patterns and resulted in low registrations for both years. Comparison to other years should be treated with caution.

The Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia have advised that the high number of divorces finalised in 2021 is in part related to administrative changes to increase finalisations and reduce timeframes. The changes enabled the finalisation of more applications for divorce than previous years and allowed the Court to reduce backlogs by finalising more divorce applications in the year than were received. Similar system changes also had an impact on divorces granted by the Family Court of Western Australia. These changes led to a 13.6% increase in divorces granted in Australia when comparing 2021 with 2020.

This constitutes a break in time series and any comparison with earlier years should be made with caution.

Divorces data for 2018 and 2019 was revised in the 2020 divorces data release. Investigation into divorces data identified that 2018 and 2019 data had previously been published on a financial year basis rather than calendar year. At the national level, the number of divorces granted for 2018 had been under reported by 270 divorces (0.5% fewer) and for 2019 over reported by 534 divorces (1.1% more). In the 2020 divorces data cube, a number of 2018 and 2019 tables were republished and revised time series data was included where appropriate. It is recommended that data users refer to the 2018 and 2019 divorces data from the 2020 publication rather than previously published data. Data for years prior to 2018 and after 2019 is based on calendar year and has not been revised.

Marriage statistics are based on the state or territory in which the marriages are registered, rather than the state or territory of usual residence of the couple. Overseas residents who marry while visiting Australia are included in marriage statistics by the state or territory in which their marriage is registered. Marriages that occur in the other Australian territories of Christmas Island, the Cocos (Keeling) Islands and Jervis Bay Territory are registered in the nearest state or territory. Norfolk Island registered marriages are included in statistics for New South Wales. All data for Other Territories is included in Australia totals.

There are a range of jurisdiction-specific administrative factors that can affect the processing of marriage registrations. These factors can impact timeliness of marriage registrations and delay provision of data to the ABS. 

Divorce applications can be electronically submitted from anywhere in the world. Divorce hearings are conducted at selected locations/cities and applicants can opt for a hearing date and location at the time of filing. Parties do not need to attend the divorce hearing; however, they must provide the necessary documentation and evidence before a divorce is granted. Divorce cases are allocated and finalised where they were filed. This may be different to the state or territory in which the applicant/s usually reside. State and territory data represents where the divorce was processed and not the usual residence of applicants.

Divorces of persons usually resident in Other Territories are registered in the nearest state or territory. For example, divorces of residents of Jervis Bay are registered and included in statistics in New South Wales. Divorces registered on Norfolk Island are also included in statistics for New South Wales.

Following changes to the Notice of Intended Marriage in September 2021, marriage data for 2022 is published based on gender rather than sex. Comparisons to previous years where couples were asked their sex should be treated with caution.

Refer to the Classifications section of the methodology for more detail on reporting marriages and divorces of the same or non-binary gender.

Reporting gender is optional in marriage forms following the September 2021 changes. In 2022, there were 331 marriages where one or more parties did not report their gender. Unreported sex in previous years was small and has not been included in published outputs.

Divorces for couples of the same gender were not separately identifiable in data provided to the ABS before 2021. There are a small number of divorces for same-gender couples included in the published divorce counts for earlier years.

To ensure confidentiality of cells with small values, some data may be randomly adjusted or suppressed and presented in tables as ‘np’ or not publishable data. Where a cell has been suppressed, the corresponding rate will also not be published.

This differs to marriages data published from 2014 to 2021 which applied a confidentiality technique called perturbation by randomly adjusting all cells.

The change in method of confidentialisation should be considered when comparing data in tables published in previous years.

For 2021 and 2022, the ABS received unit record divorces data from both the Federal Circuit and Family Court of Australia and the Family Court of Western Australia.

From 2005 to 2020 all divorce data processing has been completed by the Family Court of Australia rather than the ABS. Divorce data was provided to the ABS in aggregate format.

To ensure confidentiality of cells with small values, data may be suppressed and presented in tables as ‘np’ or not publishable data. Where a cell has been suppressed, the corresponding rate is also not published.

Both crude and age-specific marriage and divorce rates are presented in this publication. Crude marriage and divorce rates reflect the number of people who marry or divorce within a specified reference year per 1,000 estimated resident population aged 16 years and over, as at 30 June of that year.

In previous years, crude marriage and divorce rates were based on the total estimated resident population (all ages). The 2022 crude rates should not be compared to data published in previous years.

Age-specific marriage and divorce rates reflect the number of people in a particular age group who marry or divorce within a specified reference year, per 1,000 estimated resident population in the same age group (as at 30 June).

Where figures have been rounded, discrepancies may occur between totals and sums of the component items.