Divorce registration offices in Shanghai have become one of the busiest government departments as soon as the city’s civil affairs bureaus resumed operation when lockdown was lifted from the Omicron-hard-hit city on June 1.

According to some articles circulating on the internet, reservation for divorce registration has become quite difficult and the appointment dates are already booked through July, as it’s supposed that close distance between family members does not necessarily mean closer relations but also can brew up tensions in a confined space during lockdown which leads to more marital breakups.

However, some divorce registration offices told the Global Times on Tuesday that the recent increase in the number of service reservations mainly due to the backlog of divorces cases when the service was suspended due to city lockdown.

A staffer from the divorce registration office in Baoshan district told the Global Times that the appointment date for the service will be reserved in late June if applicants make reservations now. But the number of reservations has not seen a sharp increase compared with the number before lockdown, the staffer noted, adding that some applicants failed to make a reservation for the service during lockdown and had to wait until the lockdown was lifted.

The same response was echoed by an employee from the divorce registration office in Huangpu district, who told the Global Times that the increase in the reservation is mainly because of the delayed reservation due to the lockdown.

Since the cooling-off period of divorce registration was implemented in 2021, the number of divorced couples in Shanghai dropped to 29,000 in 2021 from the 60,000 in 2020.

According to the staffer from the divorce registration office in Baoshan district, the 30-day cooling-off period before divorce registration also contributes to the decline in the number of divorce cases in Shanghai since potential divorcees have to wait longer to end their marriages.

Due to the epidemic prevention and control protocols, almost all the divorce registration offices around the city have taken measures to limit the flow of visitors, which is expected to further prolong the waiting time for registration. Thus, urgent and unnecessary registrations have been postponed.