Abbreviated as MSTP; referenced by 2 other explainers
Registered marital status shows the legal marital status of people aged 15 and over. It sorts them into five groups: Married, Separated, Divorced, Widowed, and Never married.
The figures come from Census data. The Australian Bureau of Statistics collects them.
This page reports a person's legal status. It is what the law records, not what the person does day to day. So a person separated from a partner but not divorced is counted as Separated. A person living with someone but not legally married is counted as Never married, no matter how long the partnership has lasted. To see the lived-in version of marital status, see the Social marital status page. The two pages tell different stories. They have different totals. Social marital status leaves out people who live alone or with no relationship to anyone in the home.
For cultural and historical reasons, marital status framed in legal terms can sit awkwardly with how some communities understand kinship and partnership. ABS records what was reported on Census night. We report what ABS publishes.
The total counts persons aged 15 and over at their place of usual residence. It includes residents of non-private dwellings such as hospitals, aged-care homes, hostels, and student housing. It does not count overseas visitors.
Place Forecast stores marital status at the mesh block level. The ABS Census publishes it at SA1. We split each SA1 across its mesh blocks by the share of persons aged 15+. Then we add the mesh blocks back up to the area you see. So the figures for very small areas are an estimate, not a direct ABS count.
The total here will be larger than the Social marital status total for the same area. That is by ABS design. Registered marital status records a person's legal status no matter where they live. Social marital status is only recorded for persons whose household position can be classified. It leaves out residents of non-private dwellings (aged care, hospitals, student housing), group households, and visitors.
This total is also smaller than the population aged 15 and over you will see on the population pages. The number here is an unadjusted Census count. The population pages use ABS Estimated Resident Population (ERP).
Each marital-status group at the LGA level matches the ABS figure exactly. See LGA anchoring for how this works, the small gap between the page total and ABS's published LGA total, and how very small groups are handled.
The Compare small areas view shows one stacked bar per small area, with the same five groups as colour segments. Use the chart's count and 100% toggle to switch between absolute numbers and shares of each area's total. Filter to a single group to swap the stacked bar for a choropleth and cartograms covering only that group.