Impacts Of Divorce Law Changes In Brazil And The “Extinction” Of Judicial Separation

Abstract

This paper explores the connections between the most recent divorce-related law change, the Constitutional Amendment n.66 (CA66), and its impacts on individual decisions in this regard in Brazil, while analyzing how immediate the behavioral repercussions are for this type of law change and how judicial separation is affected by the fact that it is no longer a prerequisite for divorce. We have found that divorce and marriage rates increased significantly while separations decreased, showing that the law was strongly effective in less than 6 months and that judicial separation seemed to be chosen almost exclusively because of its status as an obligation.