Nearly 35 thousand children experience parents' divorce in 2007

Dutch judges pronounced 32.6 thousand divorces in 2007. A total of 34.7 thousand underage children were involved in these divorces. More than half of these children were younger than 10 years at the time of the divorce.

More divorced couples with children

Underage children were present in just over six out of ten of the marriages ending in divorce in 2007. In 1997 this was only the case for the half of the failed marriages. More and more couples get married because they want to start a family. As a result married couples were more likely to have children in 2007 than ten years previously. This is also apparent from the divorce rates by number of children.

Nearly one quarter of divorces in 2007 involved one underage child, in one third of divorces there were more than one underage children. Nearly one fifth of the children concerned were younger than 5 years at the time of the divorce, and one third were between 5 and 9 years old.

Divorces by number of underage children

Child maintenance often arranged via judge

In nearly six out of ten divorces in which underage children are involved, the judge determines that support payments should be made for the children. In just over half of these cases a monthly amount of 300 euro or more is set. Naturally, the amount depends on the number of children involved. For one underage child, support payments amount to less than 500 euro per month in nine out of ten cases.

Total amount of monthly child support

Slightly fewer flash annulments

Since 2001 couples can also separate by means of a so-called flash annulment. In this procedure a marriage is first converted into a registered partnership, and subsequently annulled without the intervention of a judge. In 2007 3.2 thousand flash annulments took place; in 2006 this figures was 3.9 thousand.

Arno Sprangers, Nic Steenbrink and Arie de Graaf