Catholic Europe has some of the highest divorce rates in the world. In Spain, 61 percent of all marriages end in divorce. In Portugal it is 68 percent and in Belgium the figure is 71 percent. While these figures may point toward the social acceptability of divorce in these papal countries, to think that divorce is cheap, easy, and treated as trivial in Europe would be wrong. As one divorce lawyer put it, divorce is characterized by “the emotional pain of separation, incomprehension about the legal process, and conflict with regard to the division of property and assets.”

In the famously liberal and socially tolerant Protestant Netherlands, 1 in 3 marriages end in divorce, a ‘small-scale’ divorce can cost between 5,000 and 10,000 euros in legal fees, and every year a further 73,000 children are affected by divorce. But Dutch children are known to be some of the happiest people on earth and there is no social stigma attached to divorce.

Read more: manilatimes.net