- Feb 5, 2002
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Divorce laws both create and reflect a reality about marriage. When divorce is difficult or impossible to secure, marriage is thought of as an enduring, tighter community, and small irritants can be forgotten or forgiven. When divorce is easy to secure, partners in a marriage tend to think of themselves as individuals first before marriage partners, and marriages can dissolve easily.
American states initially adopted a fault-based idea of divorce, where a spouse could initiate divorce proceedings only when he/she could prove the other spouse had committed some fault like adultery, abandonment, or extreme cruelty. As time went on, states expanded the grounds for fault-based claims. Thus sat America’s divorce system until the early 1970s, when, following California, all states eventually adopted no-fault, at-will divorce laws. Such laws allowed one party to leave marriage for whatever reason or for no reason at all. This bold policy change, disguised as a bureaucratic adjustment, ended the idea of marriage as an enforceable contract.
The number of divorces soared. Destabilizing marriage ended up making marriage less attractive—and marriage rates have plummeted from 72% before the reforms to under 50% in 2022. Commentators find it increasingly difficult to talk about the tragedy of divorce as more people divorced. Poverty and suicide increased for children of divorce, as did depression, drug use, and crime.
When the no-fault regime was adopted, most were concerned that men would run away with younger women. Marriage was thought to stabilize or civilize men, and destabilizing marriage, many worried, would further destabilize men. Default rules were made to discourage men from thoughtlessly breaking the bonds of marriage. To the surprise of many, it turned out that women file for a majority of divorces in every country that has no-fault divorce. Overall, women file for nearly 70% of divorces in America.
Some advocates celebrate wife-initiated divorces as expressions of female empowerment. Women are more often victims of intimate partner violence, so, the thinking goes, the newfound freedom to divorce allows women to escape bad marriages. Women no longer need to be “held back by the marriage” or endure boorish or abusive behavior. Divorce, as one economist argues, “is good for women.”
At the same time, others see that no-fault divorce creates financial and custodial incentives for women to file for divorce, since the structure of proceedings can allow wives to get decent levels of spousal support and gain custody of children. Most divorces are initiated not for abuse, infidelity or desertion, but for relatively minor and transient reasons like irreconcilable differences, drifting apart, or lack of emotional support.
Continued below.
ifstudies.org
American states initially adopted a fault-based idea of divorce, where a spouse could initiate divorce proceedings only when he/she could prove the other spouse had committed some fault like adultery, abandonment, or extreme cruelty. As time went on, states expanded the grounds for fault-based claims. Thus sat America’s divorce system until the early 1970s, when, following California, all states eventually adopted no-fault, at-will divorce laws. Such laws allowed one party to leave marriage for whatever reason or for no reason at all. This bold policy change, disguised as a bureaucratic adjustment, ended the idea of marriage as an enforceable contract.
The number of divorces soared. Destabilizing marriage ended up making marriage less attractive—and marriage rates have plummeted from 72% before the reforms to under 50% in 2022. Commentators find it increasingly difficult to talk about the tragedy of divorce as more people divorced. Poverty and suicide increased for children of divorce, as did depression, drug use, and crime.
When the no-fault regime was adopted, most were concerned that men would run away with younger women. Marriage was thought to stabilize or civilize men, and destabilizing marriage, many worried, would further destabilize men. Default rules were made to discourage men from thoughtlessly breaking the bonds of marriage. To the surprise of many, it turned out that women file for a majority of divorces in every country that has no-fault divorce. Overall, women file for nearly 70% of divorces in America.
Some advocates celebrate wife-initiated divorces as expressions of female empowerment. Women are more often victims of intimate partner violence, so, the thinking goes, the newfound freedom to divorce allows women to escape bad marriages. Women no longer need to be “held back by the marriage” or endure boorish or abusive behavior. Divorce, as one economist argues, “is good for women.”
At the same time, others see that no-fault divorce creates financial and custodial incentives for women to file for divorce, since the structure of proceedings can allow wives to get decent levels of spousal support and gain custody of children. Most divorces are initiated not for abuse, infidelity or desertion, but for relatively minor and transient reasons like irreconcilable differences, drifting apart, or lack of emotional support.
Continued below.
Challenging the No-Fault Divorce Regime
Divorce laws both create and reflect a reality about marriage. When divorce is difficult or impossible to secure, marriage is thought of as an enduring, tighter community, and small irritants can be forgotten or forgiven. When divorce is easy to secure, partners in a marriage tend to think of...
ifstudies.org
