Figures released by the Office of National Statistics last year show that the divorce rate has been declining over the past two decades.  The numbers divorcing are at their lowest for 22 years after falling by 7% for the year  2005-2006.

There has, however, been an increase in the divorce rate for people over the age of 60. The rising divorce rate for the over-60s is very possibly due to our longer life expectancy. Twenty years ago sixty was the age when you believed that your working life should be over. Nowadays, most 60-year-old would not consider themselves as being at the stage where retirement was inevitable. Indeed the government are encouraging older people to keep on  working.   Improved health care and awareness that a reasonable diet, regular exercise, giving up smoking and drinking alcohol in moderation are all factors which contribute to living a longer and more interesting life.

Senior citizens who, in the past, might have resigned themselves to continuing in unhappy marriages now feel entitled to cut loose and, perhaps, try to find  in new relationships the contentment which they feel they  have missed.

Why, on the other hand, are fewer couples in younger age groups deciding to end their marriages? Experts consider that these husbands and wives are from the generation born when the divorce rate was climbing.  So many of them have experienced the trauma of parental separation as children that they are determined to spare their own children the unhappiness and bewilderment which they themselves had to endure when their mums and dads split up.

Another aspect of life today is, of course, that so many couples are now cohabiting without bothering to go through a ceremony of marriage.   There is no social stigma, as once there was, particularly on children born out of wedlock.    Cohabiting couples  are, to all intents and purposes, indistinguishable from the officially married.   That is, however, until it comes to separation, when many unfortunate women discover that there is no such thing, at the moment,  as 'common law marriage', which would give them legal rights to financial provision, a share in property or a claim on their partner's pension.

Mega awards by the divorce courts to the ex-wives of the seriously rich have had the effect of making many  men wary of marriage.   If they offer their partners a live-in relationship rather than a wedding, the courts will not be involved when it comes to breakdown of the relationship.

Few women seem to realise this - until it is too late.  She may have cared for their children and the home for years, but if that vital piece of paper – the marriage certificate - is missing, the law can do little to help her when he walks out. Sensible girls will insist on a legally enforceable agreement about how finances are to be divided in the event that a cohabiting relationship comes to an end.

Maureen Mullally