Lightning Marriages, Divorces on the Assembly Line…

Barely time to celebrate the wedding before the story ends… In the courts, hearings follow one after another. And wedding rings are exchanged for judgments.

A lawyer, specializing in family law, summarizes the situation: “Before, people came mainly for inheritance cases or paternity recognition. Today, divorce makes up half of the hearings.”

In the hall of the family court in Hay Hassani in Casablanca, the buzz never fades. On one side, women, young and older, clutch stacks of papers in their hands. On the other, men wait their turn, eyes fixed on the courtroom doors. With each call, a couple’s story ends, a bond unravels—sometimes after just a few months, sometimes after a lifetime…

Sitting on a bench, a young woman, aged 30, awaits her turn. Married for only eight months, she has requested a divorce due to “total incompatibility. We didn’t really know each other; everything went too fast under pressure from our families!” At the other end of the bench, another woman nods: “For me, it only lasted a year!”

In Morocco, the average duration of a marriage no longer exceeds seven months. In the courts, divorce judgments follow at a frantic pace: 400 marriage dissolutions per day. And another striking fact: a quarter of separations involve couples over the age of 60. A phenomenon that questions Moroccan society and reveals profound shifts in family dynamics.

According to the recent 2024 report by the Supreme Council of the Judiciary (CSPJ), 40,214 divorce cases were processed compared to 40,023 in 2023. The same report also indicates that judicial divorce decreased by 3.1%, reflecting a rise in amicable settlements.

Divorce by mutual consent is therefore unequivocally dominant, accounting for 96.83% of cases handled during the year. That is 38,858 cases out of the 40,214 processed.

According to several lawyers specializing in family law, even though many couples still turn to the courts to divorce, there is a clear preference for the amicable procedure.

Better knowledge of rights and a predominance of dialogue culture would explain, in the view of these same sources, this trend, which is also due to the speed of the procedures. Today, consensual divorce is granted in a single day.

Still according to the CSPJ report, the economic capital leads with 56 marriage dissolutions daily. In the metropolis, modernity seems to accelerate everything: marriages, careers… and separations. A city of stress, ambition, and mobility, couples there live at breakneck speed, often caught between economic constraints and personal aspirations.

“The pressure of work, the cost of living, the lack of shared time… all of this wears couples down,” emphasizes a family mediator, who also believes that the more independent women become, the more fragile couples grow. “More educated, more present in the workforce, many women now refuse to endure an unsatisfying marriage. And this independence, while salutary, also disrupts traditional benchmarks,” the mediator continues. Indeed, if before a woman stayed married to save appearances, today she prefers to save her dignity.

In the corridors of this court, shortly before closing, faces are tired, and in their eyes, one reads weariness and sometimes relief. The word “divorce” no longer seems to frighten.

Women more readily refuse to endure an unsatisfying or violent marriage, as testified by Leïla, 39, divorced for two years, “and with no regrets whatsoever!” she declares outside a courtroom.

An opinion shared by this man, in his fifties, divorced for three years: “Divorce is difficult for spouses and especially for the children who suffer first. But what can you do when the marriage becomes unbearable?”

When Older Couples Also Turn the Page…

The trend does not only affect the young. An unprecedented fact: According to notaries (adouls), a quarter of divorces today involve couples over the age of 60. After decades of shared life, men and women decide to reclaim their freedom. While this phenomenon was unthinkable twenty years ago, today it is very real.

For several observers, this new generation of “late-life divorcees” embodies a society that finally dares to break the silence around marital unhappiness. “These are couples who stayed together for a long time for the children or due to social pressure, and who now choose to live for themselves,” explains a lawyer specializing in family law.

This is the case of K. F., met in the hall of the family court in Hay Hassani: “I lived 45 years with my husband, but I only have bad memories. The happiness brought by the births of my four children was always fleeting, overshadowed by arguments, inappropriate remarks, and the omnipresence of my in-laws in my marriage.

Today, my children are grown, married, and independent. My role as a resilient wife and guardian of the home is over. I simply want to be a happy and fulfilled mother…”

And she adds: “My husband did not accept my request for divorce. For him, it’s a matter of pride, while for me, divorce frees me from a union marked by strong aggression, injustices, and reprimands that I endured for forty long years. It had to stop one day!”

It is clear, from reading the statistics as well as from the exchanged glances and stories told in the court corridors, that divorce, long perceived as a failure, is tending to become normalized. Is marriage, once the foundation of social stability, becoming an adventure that is sometimes fleeting?

To this question, the notaries (adouls) respond that “young couples marry quickly, often under family or social pressure.” But married life cannot be improvised. This is why associations, such as Tahadi or the Union for Women’s Action, warn about the lack of real institutional support.

“The courts have modernized, but society has not,” sighs an activist, who believes that “we must learn to support couples, not just separate them.” The associative sector laments the lack of listening structures and family mediation in Morocco.

Towards a New Approach to Marriage

There is a need to rethink marriage preparation, strengthen mediation, and support couples. Because, in the opinion of a magistrate, “the problem is not only legal, but cultural and psychological. And as such, we must learn how to marry as much as how to separate.”

Recall that following the promulgation of the Family Code in 2004, it was suggested to set up training cycles for future couples to assess their knowledge of the rights and obligations of marriage, their degree of responsibility, seriousness, and commitment.

The evaluation was to be based on specific criteria to achieve a score determining the eligibility of future spouses. This proposal, inspired by models applied in some Arab countries, remained merely a line of thought…

Today, the ongoing revision of the Moudawana (Family Code) provides for strengthening the protection of women and implementing mediation. But society itself seems to have already decided: divorce is no longer a shame; it has become an assumed choice.

Even if it has a human cost: unpaid alimony, temporary housing, blended families, new vulnerabilities, and social isolation. This is the case for this young woman, barely forty, divorced for two years but who has never received alimony!

“I come to the court every month to ask. I can no longer afford a lawyer, and the complaint filed last year still hasn’t yielded anything,” she fumes. Has she tried an amicable approach? “Yes, several people from my family went to see him to ask him to pay the alimony for our three children. He says he has no money, yet he remarried and has a child.”

In the associative sector, there is regret over the lack of listening structures, the formal nature of the reconciliation procedure provided by law, and the lack of psychological and marital support.

Support centers affiliated with certain associations make do with available resources to guide women through administrative procedures and psychological follow-up. But they cannot provide financial support.

It should be recalled that in 2010, the Family Mutual Aid Fund was established with the objective of providing advances for alimony payments in case of obstruction or delay in the execution of a court decision. This aid is subject to certain conditions, including the woman’s indigent situation, the existence of a court decision, and the insolvency or absence of the husband.

The advance amount is 350 dirhams per month, capped at 1,050 dirhams per family. According to a family law lawyer, “the number of beneficiaries remains very limited due to the complexity of administrative procedures and the lack of communication around this mechanism.”

According to available figures, in 2023, 17,000 cases were processed for an amount of 214.20 million dirhams, and in 2024, 18,000 cases were processed for an allocation of 302 million dirhams.

In the corridors of this court, marriages unravel and women leave alone with their worries over alimony that never arrives and a daily life to rebuild.

As the reform of the Family Code is underway, it is essential to ensure that divorce, already painful, does not become synonymous with precarity for mothers and their children…