Even a 90-year-old husband and an 88-year-old wife say "Let's get divorced"... Divorce counseling among people in their 60s surges

[Financial News] A recent survey found that the share of divorce counseling cases involving couples aged 60 and older has nearly quadrupled over the past 20 years.

According to the "2025 Counseling Statistics" released on the 9th by the Korea Legal Aid Center for Family Relations, the center handled a total of 52,037 counseling cases last year. These included 20,646 in-person consultations, 29,730 phone consultations, 1,061 online consultations, and 48 outreach consultations.
Among the in-person consultations, divorce-related counseling accounted for 5,090 cases, or 24.7%, slightly up from 24.0% the previous year. Of these, 4,013 clients were women and 1,077 were men.
By age group, women seeking divorce counseling were most often in their 40s (30.5%) and 60 or older (22.1%). They were followed by those in their 50s (21.4%), 30s (20.2%), 20s (5.7%), and teens (0.1%).
For men, those aged 60 and older accounted for nearly half of all divorce consultations at 49.1%. They were followed by men in their 50s (21.5%), 40s (18.8%), 30s (8.4%), and 20s (2.2%).
The age distribution of people seeking divorce counseling has shifted over time.
Last year, women in their 40s and men aged 60 and older made up the largest shares of consultations. Twenty years earlier, in 2005, women in their 30s (34.5%), 40s (33.0%), and 50s (19.8%) accounted for the bulk of cases. For men in 2005, the largest groups were those in their 30s (35.3%), 40s (26.4%), 50s (22.8%), 60 and older (12.5%), and 20s (3.1%), in that order.

What stands out is that the share of consultations from people aged 60 and older has surged over the past 20 years. Among women, the proportion of clients 60 and older rose from 5.8% twenty years ago to 22.1% last year, nearly a fourfold increase. For men in their 60s and older, the share climbed from 12.5% in 2005 to 49.1% in 2025, also close to a fourfold jump.
Looking at the reasons for seeking divorce counseling, 55.1% of women cited "unfair treatment by their husbands" as the main cause. Among men, 56.7% pointed to "other serious reasons that make it difficult to continue the marriage"—such as long-term separation, personality clashes, pressure from a spouse to divorce, financial conflicts, irresponsible lifestyle, and conflicts with in-laws.
The oldest clients who sought divorce counseling were an 88-year-old woman and a 90-year-old man.
y27k@fnnews.com Seo Yoon-kyung Reporter