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Divorce Recovery Index

Name: The Rebuilders Divorce Recovery Index
Creator: Rebuilders International
License: https://rebuildersinternational.com/research/methodology

Published research on how people going through divorce are actually doing.

Divorce is one of the most common difficult experiences in adult life, and almost nobody measures it. Rebuilders International publishes adjustment data drawn from tens of thousands of assessments completed by people seeking divorce recovery support.

Everything here is free to cite, published with the number of people behind it, and permanent at its original address.

People are arriving in worse shape every year.

Adjustment among people seeking divorce recovery has fallen three years running, across five of the six areas we measure. The index stood at 64.6 in 2023, 61.6 in 2024, and 59.2 in 2025.

The annual reports

2025

3,628 PEOPLE

Three years of decline. Half the population was left rather than leaving, and the gap between the two is almost entirely about letting go — not anger.

Read the 2025 report →

2024

1,301 PEOPLE

Two in five had been married over twenty-one years. Stay-at-home parents scored lower than any other group we measure.

Read the 2024 report →

Both editions released September 2026 as the first two reports in an annual series. The 2026 edition publishes in January 2027.

What we measure

Adjustment is reported across the four phases of the RIFT framework, which is how Rebuilders describes recovery after a relationship ends.

Thinking

Disentangling from the former partner

Feelings

Processing grief and anger

Identity

Rebuilding a sense of self

Relationships

Rebuilding trust in others

Full definitions of each phase are on the definitions page.

Where people arrive worst off

Area of recovery	2024	2025
Confidence around others	73%	64%
Letting go of the former partner	67%	63%
Self-worth	66%	61%
Grief	58%	52%
Anger	57%	57%
Trusting people again	55%	52%

Median score as a share of each area's maximum. Higher indicates better adjustment.

Grief, anger and trust are consistently where people arrive worst off — and they are the areas least helped by the passage of time.

How to read the numbers

The Index runs from 0 to 100, where higher indicates better adjustment, calculated from assessment scores as a share of the maximum possible.

It is not a percentile. An individual's assessment report places that person against others; the Index measures the population as a whole. Both produce numbers between 0 and 100 and they answer different questions.

Movements smaller than about 2.5 points between consecutive months cannot be distinguished from ordinary sampling variation at current volumes, and are reported as flat. We would rather publish a dull reading than a false trend.

Who this is for

Clinicians and coaches

A reference point for where a client sits relative to others going through the same thing — and, through the segment norms in each annual report, relative to people in the same position rather than the population at large.

Journalists and researchers

A consistently measured source on a subject with very little data behind it. Every figure carries its sample size, the method is published rather than summarised, and the findings are free to cite.

People going through a divorce

This is written mainly for professionals. If you are going through a divorce yourself, the assessment behind this research is free and will tell you where you actually stand, which is more useful to you than a population average. rebuilders.net

Method

The research draws on two assessments: the Fisher Divorce Adjustment Scale, a 100-item instrument developed in 1976 and independently validated in several countries, and the Divorce Recovery Scorecard, a 24-item short form built from the same questions.

Methodology Definitions The assessments

Citing this research Rebuilders International. “The State of Divorce Recovery [year].” rebuildersinternational.com/divorce-recovery-index