Can't Wait Any Longer? The Length of Waiting Periods for Divorce and Remarriage

Abstract

Since the end of the 1990s, increasingly more states in the US have proposed introducing or lengthening the separation/waiting periods required for divorce as a policy tool to strengthen marriage and discourage divorce. I use the variation in the timing of states’ implementation of shortened waiting periods for divorce to analyze the effects of divorce waiting periods on remarriage. I find remarriage rates to decrease among younger age cohorts but increase among their older counterparts when the waiting period is reduced to 1.5 years or less. To the extent that remarriage is an important route for aging women impoverished by divorce to recover their economic and emotional wellbeing, the results suggest that while introducing a cooling-off period for divorce might allow for the preservation of some marriages, a lengthy separation period could also harm older divorced women by hampering their remarriage prospects.