It certainly is proven by Australian divorce studies than women are often the initiators of divorce, but that they may not necessarily have been the one to initiate the end of the relationship.

The Australian Institute of Family Studies tells us that ". The higher rate of applications by women has been interpreted to mean that women are more inclined than men to leave marriages. This may be so, but care must be taken with this interpretation. Certainly not all divorce applicants will be the leavers. An unknown percentage will be “the left” who, having been left, “tidy up” and ini- tiate divorce proceedings or initiate proceedings as a retaliation over being left."

The reasons why women are more likely to initiate divorce appear to be numerous, and I am sure we could all come up with several each. Some of these reasons are the same reasons men divorce women.

I am of the opinion though that if a marriage has got to the stage where they need to consider marriage counseling, then it is probably going to fail anyway.
Most of the requests to go to counseling only come from one of the spouses, so the other is there under protest!

Surprising that the Australian Institute of Family Studies cannot do better than that.

To Suseonline,
Counselling and the impartation of relationship knowledge is always valuable. People who come to counselling come for many varied reasons. To write these people off as being too far gone, is just an assumption, with no rational or experiential basis.

Some come to counselling to reconcile. Some come with closed minds but use it to give a further legitimacy to their prior decision to dissolve the marriage i.e. "I tried counselling and it did not work." etc. The truth is, the counselling does not "work", the couple have to do the work to reconcile.
Some come to counselling where one party is willing to reconcile, and the other is not, maybe they were coerced into it by family etc.

Every case is different, however, there are principles which are common to all. It just depends upon the willingness of the parties.

We have seen examples of all of the above, as mentioned before, we have seen those who reconcile successfully and who are now in happy relationships, and some who do not reconcile.

I am committed to the view, that every marriage which may be in a dark time, which is reconciled, brings much happiness to the couples and their children. In fact they do become far more experienced in human relationships and resilience. Further, reconciled marriages save the community massive amounts of negative social capital as well as avoiding the common phenomenon of psychologically and educationally disadvantaged children. Reconciled marriages avert the poverty traps associated with broken marriages and avoid expensive litigation and long-term social welfare bills.

I applaud any move which will develop a setting where couples are given another chance at redirecting their lives, with an experienced third party.

Ultimately, as was intimated in several posts above, marital disharmony is a "people problem". People can learn to soften their hearts toward one another, and behave well toward one another.

I agree Tosca that obviously some couples (I'm assuming you mean married, defacto and gay couples?) do benefit from experienced counselors, as long as those counselors are properly trained and not pushing any religious barrow.

The fact remains though that there are far more needy programs that $20 million dollars should go to, from a Government that said we were in such debt from the previous Government?

Suseonline,
The cost of single parent benefits is a far greater burden on the public purse that needs to be reduced. Too many single mothers is costing Society more than just welfare it also costs in social ways to children and courts.

A friend made the comment in regard to this policy - well they could just spend $21,000 on the wedding rather than $22,000 and they would have $1000 for marriage counselling.

Simply put this expenditure takes money from one group (taxpayers) and gives it to a select group whilst adding to the financial strain some of those it takes it from may already be feeling for very dubious outcomes.

The evidence based research does not appear to be there to support the proposition that marriage counselling works well enough to justify the use of public money to support it.

In some cases it may help greatly but the impression I've gained is that requires a serious commitment from the participants to make it work.

I agree that broken homes carry with them a high cost, many of those costs are a result of ongoing conflict between parents and can be significantly reduced where that conflict is reduced. The best outcomes for children appear to be in healthy homes with both biological parents, that is not always going to be how peoples lives are regardless of how much counselling people get.

R0bert