Many US divorces may be unnecessary because most couples who divorce have average levels of happiness, and politicians can take concrete actions to significantly cut their number, according to a new report.

The report, Second Chances: A Proposal to Reduce Unnecessary Divorce, was compiled by former chief justice of the Georgia Supreme Court Leah Ward Sears, twice considered by the Obama Administration as a US Supreme Court and William J. Doherty, Professor of Family Social Science at the University of Minnesota.

Its recommendations are based on research showing that a surprisingly high number of couples with children in the US going through divorces would be interested in reconciliation.

The report says that many divorces are unnecessary, and cites longitudinal research over the past decade showing that “the majority of divorces (from 50 to 66 percent, depending on the study) occur in couples who had average happiness and low levels of conflict in the years prior to the divorce”.

These couples generally look quite similar to continuously married couples, but they have risk factors such as having grown up in a divorced family, lower levels of commitment to marriage, and less knowledge of the effects of divorce on children.

And the report says that the assumption among professionals and the public that divorce happens only after a long process of misery and conflict is not borne out by the evidence.

The report’s authors write that “most couples who divorce actually look quite similar to most couples who do not divorce. Most divorced couples report average happiness and low levels of conflict in their marriages in the years prior to the divorce. It is the minority of divorcing couples who, during their marriages, experienced high conflict, alienation, and sometimes abuse”.

And it cited research showing that 25 per cent of individual parents indicated some belief that their marriage could still be saved with hard work, and about one in nine couples believed both partners did. Three in 10 individuals expressed openness to receiving help when asked if they would be seriously interested in obtaining reconciliation services, the study showed.

According to the research in one in 10 cases both spouses were interested in reconciliation services, and in one in three cases one spouse was interested and the other not.

Overall, in about 45 percent of marriages, one or both of the spouses reported holding hopes for the marriage and a possible interest in reconciliation. Males were more interested than females in reconciliation.

Many of the participants in this study were toward the end of the divorce process; further analysis has shown that couples earlier in the process are even more open to reconciliation.

The report says that lower divorce rates would benefit children and reduce costs for the taxpayer.

Referring to the two US states with the lowest rates of divorce, Illinois and Massachusetts, it says that if the national divorce rate were the same as that of Illinois, about 308,000 U.S. children each year would not have to see their parents divorce.

It adds: “If the nation met the Massachusetts rate, more than 400,000 U.S. children each year would be spared the experience of having their parents divorce.”

The report recommends legislation, the Second Chances Act, which would require states to adopt a waiting period of at least one year from the date of filing for divorce before the divorce becomes final.

The legislation would require the parents of minor children to take part in marriage education courses, with modules on reconciliation and non-adversarial approaches to divorce and create centers of excellence to help couples at risk for divorce, focusing on providing information and the training professionals who work with couples considering divorce.