Why Do So Many People File for Divorce at the Beginning of the Year?
What’s the Deal With Divorce Monday?
The holidays are a tipping point for a lot of distressing patterns in people’s lives. When people make New Year’s resolutions, these goals do not pop into their heads out of the blue. If you resolve not to eat sweets, pasta, rice, or bread in 2025, it is because you spent most of 2024 wishing that you could lose weight but finding that the numbers on the scale would not budge. If you resolved to only spend cash except on the recurring household bills that you had already set up on auto pay, it was because you experienced several surprising overdrafts or shockingly low account balances in 2024 and knew that you needed to become more intentional with your spending. Likewise, some people resolve to end their marriages in the new year. These are couples who have been contemplating divorce for a while but decided to initiate the divorce process at the beginning of the calendar year. If you have decided to get divorced before much of 2025 has passed, contact a California family law attorney.
Why Do So Many People File for Divorce at the Beginning of the Year?
Family law attorneys refer to the first business Monday of the year as Divorce Monday. In 2025, Divorce Monday is on January 6. This is a big day in the family law profession because it is the day when the family courts receive more divorce filings than any other day. It is also the day when family law attorneys receive more new inquiries from prospective clients about divorce.
The people who file divorce petitions on the first business Monday of the year have known for at least a few weeks that they were going to get divorced. Filing the divorce petition at the beginning of the new year instead of at the end of the old year is a strategic choice. They wanted to make a clean break between calendar years for tax purposes. For the entirety of 2024, they were married, but for the entirety of 2025, they have been going through a divorce.
As for people who contact law firms on the first business Monday of the year to schedule consultations about divorce, most of them have known for a long time that they wanted to leave their spouses. Contacting a divorce lawyer at the beginning of the year might be part of a larger New Year’s resolution to improve their personal wellbeing. For some people, though, contacting a divorce lawyer as soon as law firms reopen for business has a different cause. These prospective clients might be making a quicker decision that most other participants in Divorce Monday. Perhaps the holiday conflict was the final straw, and since they still had not cooled down by the time law offices reopened after the holidays, they decided to contact a lawyer.
Contact SNR Law Group About Filing for Divorce
A family law attorney can help you prepare and file a divorce petition. Contact SNR Law Group in Tustin, California to discuss your case.
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