January is “Divorce Month” and Tuesday will be “Divorce Tuesday” because it is the first day the lawyers’ offices will be open for business in 2017. Divorces typically spike right after the holidays.

Will the divorce lawyers at Thyden Gross and Callahan be hearing from you in 2017? Marriage therapist, Dr. John Gottman, says the number one predictor of divorce is contempt.

Contempt is rolling your eyes at your spouse. Or calling their point of view ridiculous. Feeling disgusted with your partner or having other negative feelings about them is contempt too.

But contempt is fixable. Avoid contempt signals like rolling your eyes, smirking, or making negative comments.

Allow your partner to be different from you and different from your expectations. Learn to compromise.

FindLaw.com reports that searches for “divorce” and related phrases such as “family law” and “child custody” jumped 50 percent – from just over 10,000 in December 2010 to nearly 16,000 in January 2011, and continued to surge through March. “Divorce” has been the No. 1 searched term on FindLaw.com since February 2010.

FindLaw.com also analyzed divorce filings across the U.S. between 2008 and 2011 with Westlaw, the leading legal research database. The analysis revealed that divorces spike in January, continue to rise and peak in late March.

Reasons for the spike may be due to the stress of holidays, the prospect of spending another year in an unhappy marriage or the economic recovery. Regardless of the reasons, it looks as though March is replacing January this year as the new Divorce Month.