This paper is an initial attempt to make an empirical evaluation of what happened in Chile after the 2004 enactment of the new Civil Marriage Act (Law 19,947), which included absolute divorce for the first time in Chilean law. Until that moment, the way that a marriage could formally be ended was by an annulment due to incompetence of the Civil Registry officer, possible only provided there was mutual consent of the spouses and the resources to hire an attorney. The analysis says that although the divorce rate has increased considerably with respect to the annulment rate prior to the law, it is not high in relation to other countries, despite an accumulation of couples who wanted to be divorced at the time the law was enacted. The study concludes that the new Civil Marriage Act has extended and equalized the possibility of a legal dissolution of the bond of marriage. Although no changes are seen in birth rates and the percentage of infants born outside of marriage, marriages have increased, even when controlling for some variables and discounting second marriages. Also, under the new law divorced women and their children would be more protected than women who are merely separated as the former would receive more alimony from their ex-husbands. At the end, some policy measures are discussed.
