New Divorce Customs Around The World

Happy Friday! To mark the start to this long weekend, our Pittsburgh Family Lawyers bring you ways that people around the world have started to use to mark their divorces. Once a divorce is finalized, there are many reactions that people may have. Some people feel relieved, some people feel sad, some may feel hopeful and excited about the future. Maybe you’re celebrating by going on a vacation, or buying yourself something new, or even just spending time with family and friends.

There are many more elaborate and symbolic divorce trends around the world. The Huffington Post made a list of the seven most interesting divorce customs:

1. Mantokuji Temple’s Divorce Toilet: At the Mantokuji Temple in Central Japan, unhappy visitors can get rid of bad relationships by writing down their break-up wishes on pieces of toilet paper and flushing them down the toilet.

2. Mass of Lament: In Germany, as a way to create a religious component to divorces, married couples come into Church and explain their reasons for getting divorced loudly in front of their friends, family, and congregation.

3. Divorce Ceremonies: these can take many forms, some closely resembling the structure of a wedding ceremony. Both parties exchange “divorce vows” and formally and ceremonially separate themselves from their former spouse. One couple even took the step of throwing their wedding bands into the Seine river.

4. Ceremony of Hope: created by the Unitarian Universalists, this ceremony is meant to end a marriage the way that it began, surrounded by friends and families. Putting a more positive spin on the divorce process, one of the major components of the Ceremony of Hope is that each person has to apologize to their former spouse for any pain that they may have inflicted in the past.

5. Divorce Parties: as a means of making divorce something to celebrate, there is a trend towards divorce parties, where the former spouses have one more celebration, but this time of their single lives.

6. Japan’s divorce ceremonies: In Japan, there has been a growing trend towards big, elaborate divorce ceremonies in which the parties have a buffet lunch for their friends and family, at the end of which they ritually destroy their wedding rings with a gavel.

7. Certificate of Divorce: The minority Jing people in China have to write and sign their divorce certificates outside of the home, and then ritually destroy the inkstone and pens to get rid of all traces of bad luck.

Before you start celebrating or destroying your wedding band, contact our experienced family law attorneys to get the divorce process started today!

Source: Huffington Post