Does Size Matter in Divorce?

A Saudi Arabian woman has proven that height is important in matters of the heart after she filed to divorce her husband, citing his short height. The Saudi divorce filing raises the question of fault in divorce, and of course, does size matter?

According to Gulf News, the woman told the endowment department in Al Qatif that she wanted to be separated from her husband of seven months, saying:

she could no longer withstand the mockery and shocked looks of her friends because he was too short for her.

She added that the shocking attitudes by strangers in public when they remarked how she was towering over her husband made her feel painfully uneasy and distressingly uncomfortable, Saudi daily Okaz reported.

Florida No Fault Divorce

The Saudi Arabian case is interesting for Floridians interested in filing for divorce because granting divorces only in limited circumstances, by proving fault like being to short for instance, has become very foreign to Floridians.

I recently returned from speaking about international divorces at the prestigious, Florida Bar/AAML Certification Review Course in Orlando. I’ve also written about no-fault and fault standard divorces around the world.

Florida is a no-fault state. Florida abolished fault as grounds for filing a divorce. The only ground you need to file for divorce in Florida is to prove your marriage is “irretrievably broken.”

Many people argue that the introduction of no fault divorce is the reason the United States has a high divorce rate. In fact, many people think so, and want to return to the old “fault” system to promote families.

Saudi Divorces

The number of divorce cases in Saudi Arabia has exponentially increased in recent years. According to Saudi Open Data, 35,000 divorce cases were reported in 2015, and 40,000 in 2016.

Experts believe that divorce rates have gone up by around 50 per cent this year from last year. According to the General Authority of Statistics, currently one in five marriages end in divorce.

The recent divorce about being too short though, has got to be among the most peculiar the Saudis have received. Most Social media users condemned the move by the young woman, blaming her for accepting to marry him when he proposed.

The few who supported her said she was right to ask for the separation, arguing that her uneasiness was not a matter of days that could be overcome with patience, but of a lifetime.

Does Size Really Matter?

According to a study by New York University published last year, researchers found that height might affect “more than just a man’s suit size.”

The study concluded that:

“short men married later in life than average or tall men, but were 32 per cent less likely to divorce. They were also more likely to marry less educated and younger women. Once married, they did less of the housework and earned a much higher income than their spouse.”

According to the findings, tall men married sooner in life, but were more at risk for divorce later on, as shorter men had more stable marriages. Tall men were also more likely to marry women closer to their age, and who were better-educated.

The researchers argued that “from the perspective of relationship exchange models, this indicates that the tallest men exchange their attractive attribute (height) for better-educated spouses, while short men are unable to do so.”

The Gulf News article is here.