January is often reserved for kicking bad habits and beginning work on New Year’s resolutions. But some parts of the internet — especially news articles from the last few years and even some law groups — have cast a dark cloud on the month, suggesting it is a popular time for couples to divorce. They’ve even unofficially nicknamed January “divorce month.”

Bleak, for sure. But is there any truth behind it? The answer, of course, is complicated.

“Divorce is seasonal,” Vicky Townsend, co-founder and chief executive of the National Association of Divorce Professionals, said last month. Her network consists of specialists like lawyers, therapists and tax advisers who may be used in divorce proceedings.

From Thanksgiving until New Year’s, lawyers’ offices are slow because people have put off divorcing until after the holidays, Ms. Townsend said. And people who may have been considering a divorce in the final months of the year often put off the decision until the holidays have finished, she noted. The idea may be, “New Year’s resolutions — it’s a new year, new you, new start,” she said. “The holidays are over, and I’m not going into this year as miserable as I was last year.”

People are indeed searching for divorce information just after the holidays.

A Google Trends search for “divorce” last year returned that it was, ever so slightly, most popular from Jan. 6 through Jan. 12. The term also appeared to be trending upward from the last week of December through this week. But over the past five years, the search term peaked at various times including March 2018, January 2017 and September 2016.