Divorce Statistics Canada [2026]: Rates, Trends & Data

Canada’s divorce rate fell to 5.6 per 1,000 married persons in 2020 — the lowest level since 1973, a 56% decline from the 1991 peak of 12.7, according to Statistics Canada 2022. Fewer marriages, an aging population, and a growing common-law gap are reshaping how Canadians end relationships. Data on rates by province, age group, gender, and long-term trend follows.

What is the divorce rate in Canada?

Under Canada’s Divorce Act (RSC 1985, c. 3 (2nd Supp.)), a divorce may be granted on the ground of marriage breakdown, defined in section 8 as the spouses having lived separate and apart for at least one year immediately preceding the determination of the proceeding. Adultery or physical or mental cruelty are alternative grounds but rarely invoked in practice. Amendments through Bill C-78 came into force on March 1, 2021, replacing “custody” and “access” language with “parenting time” and “decision-making responsibility,” and adding an explicit best-interests-of-the-child framework under section 16, per Department of Justice Canada 2021. For parents navigating contested arrangements, our guide to grounds for full custody in Canada covers the section 16 best-interests factors courts apply when considering sole decision-making responsibility.

Statistically, the “divorce rate” most commonly refers to the crude rate (divorces per 1,000 total population) or the refined rate (divorces per 1,000 married persons). Statistics Canada uses the refined rate as its primary indicator. Canada’s refined divorce rate in 2020 was 5.6 per 1,000 married persons — down from 7.5 per 1,000 in 2019 — the lowest since 1973 and reflecting both a long-running structural decline and a pandemic-related disruption to court processing, according to Statistics Canada 2022.

Statistics Canada’s total divorce rate (TDR) — an actuarial projection of the share of current marriages that will eventually end in divorce — stood at approximately 369 per 1,000 marriages in 2019, equivalent to roughly 37% of marriages ending in divorce, well below the often-cited but never-accurate “50%” figure for Canada, per Statistics Canada Table 39-10-0051-01.

In 2019, Canada had the second-lowest crude divorce rate among G7 countries — after Italy — with a rate 44% lower than the United States (the G7 leader), according to Statistics Canada’s fifty-year review. For context on how family law intersects with investigative work, see our divorce investigations service page and the broader family law research hub.

How Canadian divorce rates have changed since 1970

Canada’s divorce rate history falls into three distinct phases. The first wave followed the 1968 Divorce Act, which made divorce broadly accessible for the first time, producing a sharp initial climb. A second surge followed the 1986 amendments, which introduced one-year separation as the primary ground — the easiest and most common path. The rate peaked at 12.7 per 1,000 married persons in 1991, and the peak year for absolute volume was 1987, when 97,773 divorces were granted — a record that has not been approached since, according to Statistics Canada 2022.

The third phase, from 1991 to present, has been one of structural decline. By 2020, annual divorces had fallen to 42,933 — less than half the 1987 peak — and the refined rate had declined to 5.6 per 1,000 married persons, a 56% reduction over three decades. The 2020 figure was further suppressed by pandemic-related court closures; Statistics Canada recorded 56,937 divorces in 2019 and 42,933 in 2020, a 25% drop in a single year.

Alongside the rate decline, the profile of divorcing Canadians has shifted significantly. The average duration of marriage before divorce increased from 12.5 years in 1980 to 15.3 years in 2020, and the average age at divorce rose from 36.2 years in 1980 to approximately 46 years in 2020 — both figures reflecting the aging of the married population, per Statistics Canada.

Divorce rates by province and territory

Divorce rates vary substantially across Canada’s provinces and territories. The following table presents Statistics Canada’s 2016–2020 average refined divorce rate (per 1,000 married persons) for each jurisdiction, drawn from the supplemental provincial table published March 9, 2022. Rates declined in all provinces and territories between the 1991–1995 and 2016–2020 periods; the national average fell from 12.8 to 7.7 — a 40% reduction over 25 years, according to Statistics Canada 2022.

Yukon’s elevated rate likely reflects demographic composition — a younger and more transient population — rather than an elevated tendency toward divorce among long-term residents. Nunavut’s low rate reflects, in part, that formal marriage and court-processed divorce are less common in Inuit communities where other partnership forms predominate. Quebec (8.0) is notable: despite having the highest common-law cohabitation rate in Canada (43% of couples in 2021), its refined divorce rate for married persons is above the national average, suggesting a more pronounced selection effect among those who choose to marry.

Divorce rates by age group and gender

Age-specific divorce rates in Canada show sharply divergent trends since 1991, based on Statistics Canada’s age-cohort analysis 2022. Divorce rates for Canadians under 50 have declined markedly, while rates for those 50 and older rose modestly. The table below presents approximate refined divorce rates by age group at key points in the fifty-year record.

The sharpest decline has been among young adults aged 15–34, whose rate fell 60% over three decades. Middle-aged adults (35–49) declined more moderately. The slight rise in the 50–64 and 65+ cohorts reflects the grey-divorce phenomenon described in the next section. The divergence is consistent with the growing share of the married population that is older, and older Canadians divorce at substantially lower rates overall.

By gender, women who divorced in 2017 had an average age of 44.5 years, while men had an average age of 47.0 years — both figures up significantly from the 1980 averages of approximately 33 years (women) and 36 years (men), according to Statistics Canada. The overall average age at divorce was approximately 46 years in 2020.

Grey divorce: the rise and recent plateau of later-life separation

Canada’s “grey divorce” trend — the rise in divorce among adults aged 50 and older — began in the early 1990s and has since levelled off. The divorce rate among Canadians aged 50 and older rose 26% between 1991 and 2006, climbing from approximately 4.2 to 5.3 per 1,000 married persons, before remaining “fairly stable” through 2019, according to Statistics Canada 2022. This contrasts with the United States, where the 50+ divorce rate roughly doubled over the same period.

Within the older cohort, the 50–64 age group drove most of the increase. Those aged 50–64 recorded a divorce rate of approximately 6.9 per 1,000 married persons in 2019 (before the pandemic dip), while those aged 65 and older had a rate of roughly 1.5–1.6 per 1,000 — the lowest of any adult age group, per Statistics Canada’s age-cohort analysis.

Canada’s grey-divorce plateau diverging from the American doubling may reflect differences in pension-splitting and spousal-support frameworks under Canada’s Divorce Act and provincial family law, which reduce financial incentives for older spouses to separate. It may also reflect generational cohort effects: Canadians who married in the 1970s and 1980s and are now in their 60s and 70s entered marriage under a more conservative social norm than the cohorts currently driving grey divorce in the United States.

Why Canadian divorce rates are declining

Statistics Canada identifies two structural drivers behind Canada’s long-term divorce rate decline, as stated explicitly in the 2022 fifty-year analysis.

The first is the aging of the married population. Older cohorts who divorce at lower rates now make up a larger share of all married Canadians. As birth rates fell and life expectancy rose, the median age of the married population shifted upward, mechanically lowering the aggregate rate even without any change in the tendency to divorce within each age cohort.

The second driver is the increasing selectivity of marriage. As fewer Canadians choose to marry — Canada’s crude marriage rate fell from a peak in 1972 to 3.9 per 1,000 population in 2019, and further to 2.6 per 1,000 in 2020, when only 98,355 marriages were registered (the fewest since 1938), according to Statistics Canada 2022 — those who do marry may represent a population more inclined toward lasting unions.

A third structural factor, closely related to selectivity, is the shift toward common-law unions. Between 1981 and 2021, the share of Canadian couples living in common-law unions grew by 447%, rising from roughly 6% to 23% of all couples, according to Statistics Canada 2022. Because common-law separations are not captured in divorce statistics, the denominator of “married persons” increasingly represents a self-selected group whose relationship decisions may differ systematically from non-marrying couples.

Common causes of divorce in Canada

Identifying the causes of divorce in Canada with primary-source data is not straightforward. Under Canada’s Divorce Act, the legal ground for virtually all divorces is marriage breakdown, established by one year of separation under section 8. Statistics Canada stopped collecting data on specific stated reasons for divorce when the Court Reference Divorce Program was revised in 2013; no national primary-source data on divorce causes by stated reason has been published since then, per Statistics Canada Survey 3235.

International academic research — which does not necessarily apply to Canadian marriages — identifies the following as the most commonly cited contributors to marital dissolution:

• Lack of commitment — consistently the most frequently reported reason in peer-reviewed studies of divorce causes
• Infidelity or extramarital affairs — frequently cited alongside commitment issues and often co-occurring with other stressors (see our compilation of infidelity statistics and trends for U.S./Canadian survey data)
• Persistent conflict and arguing — identified across multiple studies as a central pathway to relationship dissolution
• Financial stress and disagreements — including income loss, debt, and incompatible spending habits
• Substance abuse issues — alcohol and drug dependence cited as both a direct cause and a compounding factor

Because Statistics Canada discontinued tracking stated reasons after 2013, these patterns should be understood as internationally-researched contributors rather than verified Canadian statistics. The most recent Canadian data on this topic is now more than a decade old.

What divorce statistics miss: common-law separations and the full picture

Canada’s official divorce statistics count only court-granted divorces among married couples. They exclude both informal separations of married couples who never file for divorce and, critically, all common-law dissolutions — which require no court process under current Canadian law.

The gap is substantial:

• In 2017, 8% of Canadians aged 25–64 had separated from a common-law union, compared to 6% who were separated or divorced from a marriage — suggesting common-law instability is at least as prevalent as formal marital breakdown, according to Statistics Canada 2019
• By 2021, 23% of all Canadian couples were living in common-law unions — the highest proportion among G7 countries. In Quebec, 43% of couples live common law. Among Canadians aged 20–24 who are in a couple, 79% are in common-law rather than married unions, according to Statistics Canada’s 2021 Census
• In 2017, 39% of married Canadians aged 25–64 had lived common law with their current spouse before marrying — up from 25% in 2006. The average duration of pre-marital cohabitation rose from 2.5 years (2006) to 3.6 years (2017), per Statistics Canada’s General Social Survey
• Common-law separations may involve child custody and support issues equivalent in complexity to divorce proceedings, but they proceed under provincial family law rather than the federal Divorce Act — making cross-provincial comparison difficult and rendering national aggregate data unavailable

For readers navigating the legal landscape of separation proceedings — including questions about evidence and consent to record conversations that commonly arise in divorce and separation contexts — our post on one-party consent recording in Canada covers the relevant Criminal Code framework.

The practical implication is that published divorce statistics undercount relationship dissolution in Canada. The true rate of permanent partnership breakdown — including common-law separations — is higher than the refined divorce rate reflects, and the gap has widened as common-law cohabitation has grown.

What these trends mean for Canadian families

The long-term decline in divorce rates does not mean Canadians are experiencing fewer family breakdowns — it means an increasing share of those breakdowns occur outside the formal divorce system, and that those who do marry are doing so later and ending those marriages later.

The economic consequences remain significant. Following divorce or separation, women’s median income drops by approximately 30% in the year of dissolution while men’s drops by only 6%, according to research published by Department of Justice Canada 2013 — the most recent published federal figure on this question, drawn from 2013 data; no updated national equivalent has since been released. Women with dependent children were also less likely than men to restore pre-divorce income levels within six years.

The income gap is amplified for lone-parent families. In 2013, female-led lone-parent families had a median after-tax income of $39,400, compared to $85,000 for couples with children. Government transfers made up 36% of female lone-parent family income, compared to 11% for male-led lone-parent families, per Department of Justice Canada (2013 dollars; no updated national equivalent currently published).

The procedural landscape has also changed. In 2020, 31% of divorces in Canada were filed as joint applications — up sharply from just 4% in 1987 — reflecting the shift toward collaborative and mediated family law processes under the no-fault one-year-separation framework, according to Statistics Canada 2022. This shift has practical consequences: joint applications typically resolve faster and at lower legal cost, reducing the adversarial pressure on both parties and any children involved.

For families navigating these transitions — particularly where asset tracing, cohabitation verification, or evidence gathering may be relevant — our divorce investigations service page outlines the investigative options available under Canadian law, and our practical breakdown of hidden assets in Ontario divorce covers the categories investigators most often surface in property disputes.