TIME OUT: Organisers of divorce parties show their 'voodoo dolls' during an exhibition for couples who want to divorce in Milan.

Alyssa McDonald proposes making marriage a renewable contract rather than a lifetime promise that's too easily broken.

Divorce is common, traumatic and expensive.

Dolly Parton understands divorce - or rather, D-I-V-O-R-C-E.

"Pure H-E-double-L" is how she puts it, and most divorcees would agree. Who ever enjoyed the process, except perhaps divorce lawyers? It's miserable for the former couple, worse for the kids and a guaranteed source of gloom and gossip for everyone else.

It almost makes you wonder why so many of us do it.

Around a third of Australian marriages end in divorce - that's about 50,000 couples dragging themselves through the process each year.

Which is a lot, especially considering that almost a third of us never bother getting married in the first place. And the more you look at the numbers, the more that starts to look sensible: divorce costs Australians an estimated $6 billion a year.

You could buy a lot of romantic weekends away with that.

But while it's tedious, pricey and capable of inducing guilt in even the most blameless spouse, divorce is not going away any time soon. Sad to say, but "until death do us part" is dead.

Hardly surprising, really - brides and grooms have been saying it since the Middle Ages, when death often did part us a lot sooner than it does now.

And no doubt that phrase was to blame for plenty of unhappy unions even then. So rather than frowning over the moral turpitude of modern lovers or trying to run our relationships according to medieval rules - in what other area of life would we even consider doing that? - maybe it's time to try something different.

So how about this: why can't marriage certificates have an expiry date?

Say after 10 years - or, for parents, once the youngest child hits 21.

At that point, you'd be able to renew (online, of course) or just call it a day.

Divorce would still exist, so there would be nothing to stop you from finishing a bad marriage whenever you wanted. And maybe you'd need a prenup (yes, I know, romantic) to help divide your joint assets.

But once you hit the expiry date you'd be able to split without making the process any more expensive - or time-consuming or unpleasant - than breaking up already is.

It might sound a little odd, but isn't it much stranger that marriage certificates don't allow for the fact that relationships sometimes end?

After all, we added expiry dates to driver's licences once people started surviving longer than their motoring skills did. And passports have to be renewed in order to ensure that the information they contain is reasonably up-to-date.

Apart from birth certificates, what other documentation is expected to last forever?

Lifelong marriage vows made sense when women were financially dependent on their husbands, and they made sense when marriage was a strictly religious institution.

But women no longer need a husband as a social security safety net, and Australia has had civil celebrants for almost 40 years.

Then there are more recent developments: hot-air-balloon weddings, underwater weddings, or the tempting opportunity offered by one company "to skydive straight into your own ceremony". (Their website is very helpful. "If you want to jump with your wedding gown on, this isn't a problem, we just ask that you wear a pair of tracksuit pants over the top while you jump. We've had some brides do this and choose white tracksuits, so it matches their gowns.")

To some people I am sure this sounds heavenly.

But godly it's certainly not.

And why should it be? In the West, modern marriage is primarily about love and taxes. It's a valuable institution, but we undermine it by trying to make it fit biblical standards.

Opponents of gay marriage might want to think about this one, too.

So. Renewable marriage licences! Couples who have reached the end of the line would be able to go their separate ways without the trauma and expense of a divorce.

The law would acknowledge the indisputable fact that long-term relationships are not always permanent. Some of the social stigma attached to splitting up - particularly tough for school-age kids, as well as those of us with bitchy friends - would be removed.

And some couples might even stay together longer. More than 40 per cent of divorces now happen in the first 10 years of marriage, but if people with a seven-year itch held on in the hope they could make it through a decade without killing each other, surely at least some of them would sort out their differences.

And wouldn't it be nice to stop thinking of divorce as "failed marriage", with all the moral judgment that disapproving phrase implies?

Deciding to split shouldn't mean that your whole history with someone has to be consigned to the dustbin of failure. It's not exactly shocking that sometimes the person who was perfect for you at 25 isn't such a great match a couple of decades later.

Divorce shouldn't be shameful, either. "If you don't like the road you're walking, start paving another one," as Dolly would have it. Seriously, the woman's a sage.

Okay, so perhaps the law isn't likely to change any time soon. But it's worth asking: why not?

Most married couples I know have every hope of staying together for good.

But these days, everybody recognises the likelihood that not all of them will make it.

Well, almost everybody - the government is still pretending otherwise. And the only people who benefit from that are lawyers.