REAL TALK: I Do… For Now? Mexico City Considers Temporary Marriages. Good Idea??

Officials in Mexico City are considering a new way to address the city’s high divorce rates: by making marriages temporary.

Couples would be allowed to decide on the length of their marriage (minimum license: two years), and the contracts would contain prenup-like language about financial support, how marital assets will be divided, and who will get custody if there are any kids born. At the end of the contract, happy (or semi-happy) couples could opt to renew for another two years, while those who are tired of being together could simply walk away without a legal hassle.

“The proposal is, when the two-year period is up, if the relationship is not stable or harmonious, the contract simply ends,” Leonel Luna of the Party of the Democratic Revolution, who co-authored the bill, told reporters. “You wouldn’t have to go through the tortuous process of divorce.”

Mexico has the second-largest Catholic population in the world (after Brazil) and, needless to say, the Catholic Church isn’t happy about the idea of temporary marriages.

“This reform is absurd. It contradicts the nature of marriage,” said Hugo Valdemar, spokesman for the Mexican archdiocese. “It’s another one of these electoral theatrics the assembly tends to do that are irresponsible and immoral.”

The last bit of “electoral theatrics”, according to the Mexican archdiocese, was in 2009, when they infuriated conservatives by legalizing gay marriage in Mexico City.

Temporary marriages are legal in Iran, where they can be as short as a few minutes or as long as a lifetime. They’re considered a loophole in Islamic law, which decrees that sex outside of marriage is a crime punishable by whipping (or, in cases of adultery, death), though some call it a form of Koran-sanctioned prostitution. No word on whether temporary marriages affect the divorce rate there.

Though the divorce rate in the rest of Mexico is quite low, the numbers of divorces have been increasing. In Mexico City, more than 50% of all marriages end in divorce within the first two years, Reuters reported.

Other sources say the divorce rate is much higher. Lizbeth Rosas, a co-sponsor of the bill, told a Mexican newspaper that 8-out-of-10 couples in Mexico City eventually get divorced.

“I know it’s controversial,” Rosas said, “but it seeks to support and strengthen family bonds.”