This contribution provides an overview to what is known about divorce, its trends,
cross-national variation, predictors, and consequences. Geographically, the focus is on Europe
and North America and I focus on formal divorce, that is, the ending of a marital union. The
paper is a contribution to a book volume edited by Judith Treas, Jacqueline Scott and Martin
Richards: The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to the Sociology of Families.