Just my opinion of course, but I don't think it's BS. The piece of paper has nothing to do with it. It's the attitude of the two people going into the relationship.
If both people go in prepared for full life commitment through thick and thin you'll get a different outcome on average than two people going in with one foot out the door ready to flee at the first sign of trouble. The latter is a recipe for weak relationships and families - kids deserve to have stable parents who are fully committed to each other, not volatile parents who re-evaluate their commitment every year and break up if either isn't "feeling it".
Marriage is not a chemistry coin toss where the marriage automatically fails due to "irreconcilable differences" if you get bad RNG. That's an excuse. Stable marriages aren't chance, they are hard work. It's like building a house, or software. You have to constantly pour work into it to fix issues, strengthen the foundation, etc, or it will fail under load later. IMO if people looked for partners with the right attitude and committed to each other with the right attitude and put in in the work to back up their commitments, divorce rate would be a tiny fraction of what it is. I argue the divorce rate is so high because the people getting married are doing so with flimsy commitment, unwilling to put in the work required to build a solid foundation. Your solution does not help the commitment problem at all, but exacerbates it by making it even easier for relationships to have flimsy commitment levels ("let's not go all in, let's just commit to each other for one year, and then we'll break up after the honeymoon stage is over").
You can have the attitude without the piece of paper, no? Your point about people getting married without it proves my point: don’t get married. At best all you need is the long vault attitude. At worst it is much easier to end a relationship.
If both people go in prepared for full life commitment through thick and thin you'll get a different outcome on average than two people going in with one foot out the door ready to flee at the first sign of trouble. The latter is a recipe for weak relationships and families - kids deserve to have stable parents who are fully committed to each other, not volatile parents who re-evaluate their commitment every year and break up if either isn't "feeling it".
Marriage is not a chemistry coin toss where the marriage automatically fails due to "irreconcilable differences" if you get bad RNG. That's an excuse. Stable marriages aren't chance, they are hard work. It's like building a house, or software. You have to constantly pour work into it to fix issues, strengthen the foundation, etc, or it will fail under load later. IMO if people looked for partners with the right attitude and committed to each other with the right attitude and put in in the work to back up their commitments, divorce rate would be a tiny fraction of what it is. I argue the divorce rate is so high because the people getting married are doing so with flimsy commitment, unwilling to put in the work required to build a solid foundation. Your solution does not help the commitment problem at all, but exacerbates it by making it even easier for relationships to have flimsy commitment levels ("let's not go all in, let's just commit to each other for one year, and then we'll break up after the honeymoon stage is over").