Utah Commission on Marriage

The Utah Healthy Marriage Initiative focuses on helping people form and sustain a healthy and enduring marriage by promoting/providing marriage education services, resources, and training. Five areas of focus have been:
1. Building service capacity by contracting to provide community-based marriage and relationship education classes and activities
2. Creating/maintaining a website (StrongerMarriage.org) to provide research-based information and online educational resources with a statewide reach
3. Working with the State Office of Education in promoting the Adult Roles and Financial Literacy high school course.
4. Providing the Utah Marriage Handbook to teachers and students as a curriculum supplement, to individuals applying for a marriage license through the county clerks’ offices statewide, and through the website
5. Providing an annual couples counseling training for professionals and family life educators

The Utah Commission on Marriage is charged with making recommendations about how to promote, strengthen and increase awareness of the importance of marriage in Utah.

Marriage & relationship Education services are available locally in 19 counties and statewide, and awareness of these resources doubled from 2008 to 2011 (15% to 30%). The number of recently married couples participating in premarital education increased from 36% in 2008 to 50% in 2011.

Approximately 400 counseling professionals statewide have received training each year since 2003. The “Utah Marriage Handbook” is distributed to approximately 9,000 high school students and 23,000 marriage license recipients per year. Based on a national model, researchers calculated that the percentage of children born to single-parent families between 2005-2010 in Utah was 3% lower than would have been predicted without the investment in the Utah Healthy Marriage Initiative.