Divorce advice - the US divorce rate in 2005

Before divorce advice can be given it is first necessary to develop an appreciation for the US divorce rate in 2005. The US Divorce rate in 2005 dropped by 2.9% from 953,563 to 926,116 couples. However, the significance of this drop in the US divorce rate was not due to a reduction in the divorce statistics, but because the marriage rate had reduced by 1.9% over the same period (from 2,460,689 to 2,414,069). These statistics imply that the drop in the US divorce rate is not a reflection of more people choosing cohabitation over marriage, but rather that less people were actually getting divorced. So does this mean that the state of relationships and marriages are healthier than the previous years? Unfortunately, it does not necessarily mean that. This over-all drop in the divorce statistics could have been influenced by a significant drop in the rate of divorce in the States that were plagued by extreme natural disasters over that same period. It is well known that extreme natural disasters and war do have an impact on the divorce statistics. After all, people tend to forget about their marital problems when their lives are threatened by natural disasters. Although the 2005 statistics showed a fall in the divorce rate across the US, there were some states whose rate of divorce increased. These were: Alaska, Colorado, Delaware, District of Columbia, Idaho, Massachusetts, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia, Wyoming, Puerto Rico.