If you are unfamiliar with the term, “gray divorce,” it refers to a divorce between two people who are in their elderly years, or who are quickly approaching these years. Gray divorces are becoming more and more common as people live longer and as medicine gets better, improving the quality of life during retirement years. 

In the past, it was very common for people to remain married for their entire lives once they tied the knot. However, now, roughly fifty percent of all marriages end in divorces.

Gray divorces contribute significantly to this statistic.

Divorce rates for people above the age of 50 have doubled since 19. They have tripled for people who are above the age of 65.

Divorce trends are changing.

Things that were unheard just a generation ago are now well on their way to being, if not commonplace, at least not creating too much of a stir.

Many theories are being proposed for this transformation—as usual, the millennials are cited as being behind many of the changes—but no one can say for sure that any single thing is causing a divorce to be in transition.

Some of these trends are good, while others seem positive on the surface but show some tarnish when they are examined more closely. In 2016, the last year for which figures are available, there were 6.9 marriages for every thousand people in the U.S. and 3.2 of those ended in divorce, according to the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

What is a gray divorce? It's a term used to describe an increasing and all too common occurrence in the past decade or so--getting a divorce after the age of 50.

In recent years the rates of "gray divorce" have more than doubled!