A 'child bride' divorced at 20: Meet Australia's youngest divorcees

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Natalie Hancock was told her entire life that the most important thing a young woman could do was get married.

She grew up in Sydney's Hills District, immersed in her local Pentecostal church, where, by her late teens, her biggest romantic prospect was a boy from church who told her that God had chosen him as an "ordained messenger" and came bearing a message for her: that she should marry him.

But at 19 — while expanding her world at a working holiday program in the UK she soon discovered was something of a scam — Natalie met the man who would become her husband within a year.

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They met while working at a pub together: He was the chef and 10 years her senior. Natalie recalls he'd recently arrived from Hungary and barely spoke a word of English, but she was smitten.

"He was charming and absolutely obsessed with me," she tells SBS News.

"Having grown up firmly rooted in the church, my experience with men — and relationships in general — was pretty stunted."

When her visa was a few months from expiring, he asked her to marry him.

"I was thrilled — not because I knew it was a good, or even safe, decision; but because I had grown up in a world where getting married was one of, if not the most important thing you could do as a young woman," she says.

Less than a year later, the pair separated, joining the tens of thousands of young Australians who divorce each year.

The latest annual figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) show more married couples divorced in 2025 than the year before: 49,148 divorces were granted — an increase of 4.1 per cent — pushing the national divorce rate to 2.2 per 1,000 people, up from 2.1 in 2024.

The median age at divorce has stayed relatively steady in recent years and sits at 47.3 for men and 44.4 for women.

But dig a little deeper into the data and you'll find a small, easy-to-miss subset: the people who married and divorced young.