THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 30, 1995 TAG: 9510300032
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY MATTHEW BOWERS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 130 lines
John R. Maus is one of the busiest divorce lawyers in Louisa County. Last year he handled about six of them.
Good thing Maus doesn't depend on divorce cases alone to pay his bills. He happens to practice law in the locality with the lowest divorce rate in Virginia, state Supreme Court records show.
In 1994, people living in rural, midstate Louisa County filed for just 59 divorces, or 2.75 for every 1,000 residents.
Statewide last year, 34,231 divorces were filed, a rate of 5.29 per 1,000 Virginia residents, almost double the pace of Louisa County.
Alexandria was the most divorce-laden place in the state. The urban Washington suburb had a rate of 12.91 per 1,000, almost 2 1/2 times the statewide rate and more than 4 1/2 times Louisa County's rate.
In Hampton Roads, Virginia Beach is the ``divorce capital'' with 3,131 filed in 1994, for a rate of 7.13 per 1,000 - well above the state average.
Further, Virginia Beach, just 1 1/2 times the size of neighboring Norfolk, filed more than 2 1/2 times the number of divorces, and experienced a divorce rate half again as big.
Divorce is omnipresent in our culture. Experts variably predict that from one-third to more than one-half of all marriages will end in divorce. But what makes marriage seemingly more precarious in Virginia Beach than in surrounding cities and much of the state? And what makes Louisa County - at least for one year - the state's safest place for marriages?
There are no definitive answers;divorce, like love and marriage, is far too personal and individual for concrete generalizations. But some experts offer educated guesses.
Suburban Virginia Beach has a lot of young families with husbands and wives in their 30s and 40s - prime divorcing ages. It also has a heavy military concentration. Those families often are more transient, with fewer connections to others in the community and more of a sense of isolation.
Navy cruises that keep spouses apart for six months place even greater stress on marriages. That is particularly true for couples in the lower-income ranks of the military where ``between the pay and being gone frequently creates marital difficulties,'' said Charles R. Hofheimer, a Virginia Beach divorce lawyer.
On the other hand, Virginia Beach also is relatively affluent. It and even wealthier Alexandria both have median family incomes greater than the state's, and a higher proportion of women work in both cities than in the state as a whole. In those cities, women may have more chances to see other possibilities for their lives, and more economic freedom to break free from unhappy marriages.
``I think that there may be a greater sense of independence among women who are more affluent and therefore are more able to sustain themselves when problems occur in the marriage,'' Hofheimer said.
Generally, cities and urban suburbs have higher divorce rates than rural areas, but there's little proof why.
``People in rural areas tend to be more conservative, more traditional, less likely to see divorce as a solution,'' said Louis H. Janda, an associate professor of psychology at Old Dominion University in Norfolk. ``Families seem to be more important in rural areas. . . . Temptations are more likely in urban areas.''
Still, Norfolk's divorce rate is less than that of suburban Virginia Beach, possibly because more of Norfolk's residents are poor or older and established. Poor, inner-city residents may not marry as much, or be able to afford divorces once married. Many older couples see themselves as past their splitting-up days.
But affluence and size aren't always good indicators.
Wise County, in the depressed, rural coal country of southwestern Virginia, had one of the state's highest divorce rates in 1994 despite being neither urban nor affluent - 10.51 per 1,000 residents. In fact, more than 20 percent of its families were below the poverty level in 1989, and its unemployment rate - 13.2 percent in 1992 - was more than twice that of the state.
``I know in hard times the divorce rate is higher, and there's more tension in families,'' said Edward S. Neukrug, an associate professor of counseling at ODU.
And the Northern Virginia suburb of Fairfax County and city, with nearly 1 million people, had a smaller-than-average rate of 3.75 per 1,000. A lot of affluent people live there, but many are single.
So, what's happening in Louisa County? Hard to know, say those who live there.
``My guess is we have an awful lot of people here who haven't bothered to get married,'' said local lawyer Maus. ``We have a lot of folks who simply live together. Guess the fewer marriages you have, the fewer divorces you have.''
True enough, but unwed couples are everywhere. It doesn't completely explain the statistics from Louisa County, a place of 21,500 residents that sits inside the triangle formed by Charlottesville, Fredericksburg and Richmond, nearest the Charlottesville corner.
Its biggest employers are a Virginia Power plant and a German plastic-pipe manufacturer. The town has close to 400 farms, five doctors and one weekly newspaper. Its downtown stores close at noon on Saturdays, and many of its community activities center on children.
Norma H. Palmore, a county welfare-fraud investigator and lay leader at the Episcopal Church of the Incarnation, is seeing more unmarried couples and more couples who separate but can't afford to file for an official divorce. But she also credited the county's active churches for the low number of divorces.
``We do have a few really booming fundamentialist churches,'' Palmore said. ``That really has an impact on it.''
ODU's Professor Neukrug agreed. ``Baptists,'' he laughed. ``Count the number of Baptists in Louisa County. Religion plays a big part in this.''
The Rev. David P. Cole, pastor of Louisa Baptist Church, said his and other churches responded in recent years to families with problems by offering more family services, such as parenting training, marriage retreats and even free babysitting one Saturday night a month, so couples get some time alone.
And for the past five years, he hasn't married any couples who haven't completed four premarital counseling sessions.
``I won't marry folks right off the street,'' Cole said.
Stable marriages aren't just a recent phenomenon in Louisa County. This month, Palmore's parents - lifelong county residents - celebrated their 60th wedding anniversary.
But some were surprised at the divorce statistics in Louisa County.
``Everybody I know is getting divorced,'' said one lawyer in the county. ``Both my secretaries. The attorney down the hall.''
Worse, he was in the end stages of a divorce himself. He asked not to be named.
``I think Louisa is just like any place else'' when it comes to divorce, the lawyer said. ``It's a horrible trend in the United States.'' ILLUSTRATION: Some possible reasons Virginia Beach's divorce rate is higher
than much of the rest of the state:
Lots of young families with husbands and wives in their 30s and
40s - prime divorcing ages.
A heavy military concentration. Navy cruises that keep spouses
apart for six months place even greater stress on marriages.
A more affluent population. Because more women work, they might
have more economic freedom to break free from unhappy marriages.
KEYWORDS: DIVORCE RATE by CNB