Take it From a Divorce Coach and Attorney: Ending No-Fault Divorce Is a Scary Suggestion

[niyad]

Take it From a Divorce Coach and Attorney: Ending No-Fault Divorce Is a Scary Suggestion
5/24/2023 by Amy Polacko and Rosemarie Ferrante


No-fault divorce – meaning that the filing spouse is not required to show wrongdoing by the other spouse as the reason for dissolution – first began in 1969, when then-Gov. Ronald Reagan of California signed the first law of its kind in the US. Today, every state and the District of Columbia offers no-fault divorce.(Grace Cary / Getty Images)

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In 19th-century America, fault-based divorce laws required you to prove specific grounds to get divorced. This led to all kinds of benchmarks that varied from state to state including: neglect, abandonment, adultery, intemperance, extreme cruelty and lengthy imprisonment. The process was adversarial and favored whoever had more resources. In 1969, California Governor Ronald Reagan (R), who was divorced himself, signed California’s Family Law Act, which introduced the grounds of “irreconcilable differences.” This concept was eventually adopted by all 50 states to address the limitations and shortcomings of fault-based divorce systems. Simply put, judges don’t have time to figure out who did what to whom—and don’t care. And, if you thought divorce was already expensive, imagine the attorney’s plus investigator’s fees to prove infidelity if we went back to a fault-based framework.

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Some blame no-fault divorce for contributing to the breakdown of the family unit. But in a separate study, Wolfers discovered that, while more people got divorced after these new laws passed, dissolution rates leveled out after 10 years. It was simply bottled-up demand. Wolfers said going back to fault-based divorce is dangerous. “If a husband was abusive and we were in a full-consent divorce world [requiring consent from both sides], that would mean the wife would be trapped in this situation forever. And if she was a victim of domestic abuse, that would be very terrible.”

Conservative commentator Steven Crowder has been vocal about his disdain for no-fault divorce. A video of him in a verbal exchange with his wife ordering her to be “disciplined” was leaked recently. It begs the question: Do some Republicans want to abolish no-fault divorce so they can keep their wives captive and under control? Crowder said the comments were taken out of context and went public with his divorce saying, “Since 2021 I’ve been living through what has increasingly been a horrendous divorce. … No, this was not my choice. My then wife decided that she didn’t want to be married anymore and in the state of Texas that is completely permitted.”
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When women report domestic abuse or child abuse, they are often not believed—and can even lose custody of their children, documented in George Washington University Law professor Joan Meier’s seminal 2020 study. Specifically, Meier found that less than half (41 percent) of women’s abuse claims are believed. And the odds that mothers’ allegations of child abuse will be credited are 2.23 times lower than that of domestic violence. Child sexual abuse is rarely accepted by the courts (15 percent) and mothers reporting a father’s abuse (of various kinds) actually lost custody in 26 percent of cases.

A growing movement is shining a light on how domestic abusers manipulate the legal system in their favor when it comes to custody, using the junk science theory that the other parent has “alienated” them from their children. In an April 2023 report, the United Nations spoke out against parental alienation as a highly gendered weapon used in court and tied to domestic, child and sexual abuse. Fault-based divorce could make this situation even worse. Attorney Sandra Radna said she’s seen many women liberated from unhappy marriages since New York was the last state to institute no-fault divorce in 2010. “Going backwards would dramatically increase litigation because grounds for divorce would be required to be proven if the other spouse did not agree,” she said. ” The court system is already congested. Litigated divorces often take years to resolve. This would add cases to an already stressed and overcrowded system and would negatively impact all involved, including the children.” The children—and their mothers, as Wolfers continues to drive home. “Men’s groups often speak about no-fault divorce as a feeling that they’re ripped off because they don’t control their property,” he said. “The moment you go a step further and admit that people are no longer property, this rhetoric becomes a lot less persuasive.”

https://msmagazine.com/2023/05/24/no-fault-divorce-women-republicans/

[Tetrachloride]

1. This is an especially useful thread. ty

[niyad]

2. You are most welcome.

[Easterncedar]

3. In Massachusetts decades ago

A friend’s attorney asked if she couldn’t get her husband to hit her so she could get her divorce. He was a convicted criminal.

[niyad]

4. Sadly, were we in the least surprised? Decades ago, NOT in a divorce case, thre

officers in a small, local police station, all known to me through my work, offered to put bruises on me for a possible restraining order. Thankfully, I had other, far more expensive (for the perp), legal alternatives. Do NOT EVER piss me off, or threaten my friends. It WILL cost you.