No-Fault Divorce

I pretty much agree with that page, Susannah; I especially liked this:

"If we want less government, we must have stronger families, for government steps in by necessity when families have failed."--Jimmy Carter

But also there are marriages like Danna's parents that should just not continue. In cases where BOTH parties agree it's time to move on there should be some way for them to do so--divorce and get it over with.

I myself had an early disastrous marriage that I'm very glad to have gotten out of before children came along. We should never have married and both of us knew it, but I was the only one brave enough to do something about it. If I'd had to fight him I'd probably still be married, or suicided (I was that miserable). There has to be a way to correct mistakes.

Bottom line, I am conflicted, but I do think it's too easy for people to just pick up and leave.

Lynn Siprelle, Editor

I've known people who've actually said to me "If if doesn't work, we'll just get divorced." I think that people should be allowed to get a divorce, and I agree that people should be able to divorce their spouses withouth they're agreement. (As in in the case of abuse or adultery.) But I think that divorces are waaaaaay too easy in America. (I'm not saying they're easy, just easier than they should be.) Heck if you really want to you can go to Nevada and get a quick divorce. It's a matter of not making people take responsibility for their actions. Plus if it were harder for people to get a divorce a lot more people might go out and work on making their marriage work. If people thought that they had to spend their lives with this person, they might make more of an effort. Once again, I'm not saying that all people who get divorces don't make an effort, but a lot do, and I can name a few people off the top of my head. I don't want the marriages to go back to, like, the 50's, but I do think they should find a medium.

I couldn't open the link, but wasn't one of the reasons for no-fault divorce that one or the other of the spouses was often forced into making false or exaggerated claims in order to end a marriage? That is, a wife might claim abuse or a husband claim adultery (for examples) in order to get a divorce, even if it were not true.

Not to mention the need to trot out all the details of a marriage before a court -- talk about big government/nanny state.

But really, I am just wondering if anyone here knows more about that than I do.

This is not speaking directly to no-fault, but I think easy divorce is not a major problem. A major problem is that people enter into marriage without thinking about it -- and if they aren't thinking about their marriage, they aren't weighing the divorce laws in their decision either.

Even progressive Catholic parishes around here are fairly strict these days about marriage prep -- as are many mainline Protestant and Evangelical churches -- which I consider a good thing. The time to address the problem is before the marriage!

A truly loveless, unhappy marriage is a Godless marriage (sorry to nonbelievers in any divinity, but I think God is present where there is love whether we acknowledge it or not! ) and I can't see whom the preservation of that marriage serves. How many of my friends in grad school told me, "I'll never marry because I never want to be trapped in an awful relationship like my parents." In truth, these adult children may not really "get" their parents' relationships, but in general I think those awful marriages can really distort kids' idea of love, marriage, and parenting in longterm ways.

I say this, BTW, as a *victim* of divorce. I was too young at the time to know what really happened -- all I know is that children don't *want* to move on. They don't *want* their parents to have a family life that doesn't include them. They don't want to feel like the third (or fifth) wheel in their own house. What's that Everlast song you like, Lynn? Boy that says a lot. Sometimes divorce is the only way, but we ought to be able to find ways to make sure it is rare without a massive invasion of privacy.

while I believe marriage should be forever[[except as others have said in abuse,,,]] I think that if you have no NO children that it is best to get out before you have them. This being said I believe you should TRY to be very sure that this is the person you wanted to marry.

I am sure that there have been cases where people have made major changes in themselves AFTER they got married and this change could cause a break -up.

yes I think we as a whole [people] should take a more serious look at marriage.

and I am going to put my 2 cents in and stick my neck out and say that people should BE married BEFORE they have children !! I have seen where people have had 2 and 3 kids and say they are not married because they are not sure if their marriage would last
what is all of this telling our children??

And always have been! Especially me! There's really no other explanation for why I got married the first time. I knew it was wrong, I knew it was a huge mistake, I did it anyway. The sex wasn't even good, in fact it was awful, and he was mean to me. My parents are still married, so were his, and we both were counseled (as gently as possible) that we weren't right for each other and we did it anyway.

Note: I'm not taking anything personally here. I was just frickin' stupid and there's no one to blame but me, but boy, being tethered to that guy for eternity would've been enough to drive me around the bend quite literally. Wherever he is (I have a pretty good idea but haven't spoken to him in 15 years), I hope he finally can admit I did the right thing for both of us; by the time I broke us up he hated me but wouldn't end it because he didn't want to be alone.

There was just no other reasonable outcome. Our stab at marriage counseling was a disaster. I realized that I didn't know him at all, and that his behavior (refusing to hold a job but refusing to do any housework either) wasn't a case of him misunderstanding me; he understood me perfectly, to my shock. He literally didn't care, and said so; he had a great deal--I brought in the money, I did the cooking and housework, what was the problem? Why would he want that to change? If I didn't like it, too bad. That's the conversation almost literally. The marriage counselor looked like someone had vomited in her office. Six months later I sent him home to his mother.

I hear in the ensuing years he's done well; he's gotten remarried, as have I, though I have no idea where that's ended up for him. He finished his degree and entered a field he was very well suited for, and if the little bit of Googling I've done has turned up the right guy, he's done well. And I'm glad for him. But I'm glad he's someone else's problem, not mine.

I'm very interested in contractural marriages--alternatives like trial marriage (married for, say, five years with an option to renew) or covenant marriage where when you "sign up" you know you're in it for life because it's in the paperwork--no out except for abandonment or cruelty.

Because, the thing is, divorce was harder to get in the old days, but couples broke up all the time. They took separate rooms. They took lovers. They lived in separate houses sometimes (under the guise, in the upper classes, that the wife was living at the country house. In the lower classes, people, usually men, just abandoned their families. There has never been a golden age, unfortunately.

Lynn Siprelle, Editor

Both my maternal grandparents were divorced when they met and married each other right after WWII (back when people "didn't get divorced" which is pure bull hockey). All three of their children are divorced, and IMO they all chose their first spouses badly because my grandparents second marriage was as bad or worse than their first ones and they DIDN'T get divorced. Being raised in a house full of abuse, alcholoism, and denial sets up the children for bad relationships as adults.

The point is, divorce exists because people need it, BECAUSE THEY ARE FLAWED CREATURES WHO MAKE HUGE MISTAKES. I wanted my mother to divorce my stepdad for years and years. She stayed because she thought the son they'd had together "needed his father". My stepdad was an abusive, weak man (abused to hide his weakness) and my brother has grown up so damaged because of the way my step dad treated us all. It wasn't until he was grown that my mother realized that staying didn't help my brother, it's scarred him. We all were damaged. I've spent a lot of time in therapy and counseling. Once my mom and step dad did divorce, the stormy relationship stopped and they actually get along better now. They had been living on seperate floors of the house. They'd tried marriage counseling but it didn't work.

Saying that divorce being easy is destroying the family and the sanctity of marriage is ignoring why so many people are divorcing in the first place. The divorce rate was increasing long before the no fault divorce laws. People divorce because a)they chose the wrong person to marry b)they chose the wrong reasons to marry c)they didn't know how to maintain a healthy relationship.

I think it is a hideous proposition to force people to stay married just because you think they weren't abused enough or cheated on enough. If people entered into the institution for the wrong reasons and can't work it out, let them terminate the failed marriage and heal and move on.

If a marriage has failed, not letting people divorce and get out of it will damage those people involved: the spouses, their children, everyone.

MAKING DIVORCE EASIER DOES NOT MAKE MORE DIVORCES. FAILED MARRIAGES IS WHAT MAKES MORE DIVORCES. If we made getting married harder, then maybe there'd be less divorce.

If you really want to make lives better for children, do what you can in your community to combat poverty, hunger, homelessness, abuse, and at risk kids. Leave the people alone who's lives are already devestated by a terrible mistake in who they married.
______

May The Hair On Your Toes Never Fall Out

--Traditional Hobbit Blessing

I would also agree that divorce is symptomatic of failed marriages. I would add that failed marriages are symptomatic of other things that have failed in society.

I agree that marriage is not romantic. I think that the romance is a nice added benefit, and that theirs nothing wrong with it, but I personally didn't get married for that. My husband and I had been dating for 3 months when we got engaged. The reason we got engaged wasn't because we were 'in love'. (Although we were.) It was because we talked, and realized that we had the same religous views, the same child rearing views, and the same short and long term goals. The fact of the matter is that beyond that we don't have a lot in common. (Kenny's outdoorsy, sporty, and I'm as far from that as you can get!) But the rest is what got us through our hard times, and they're what gets us through the times when we aren't 'in love'. I remember a sermon I heard about the different kinds of love.
Although all this reminds me of something funny some one said to me at church the other day. I was chasing Daniel and Kenny was chasing Beth, and Angel was talking to me about something, and someone (I forget who) came up and asked how long me and kenny'd been married. I said 6 years, and she said "Wow, you've been busy!" LOL Of course if she'd know I'm only 25 she would have know that I couldn't have been married much longer than that, but most people guess my age to be mid 30's, so . . .
Anyway, I agree that the problem with divorce is a symptom of failed marriages. I also think that the reason that theirs so many divorces is because of two things. Peoples unreasonable expectations in marriage, and their inability to follow through on what they say.

"Stick a smile on your face and spend the rest of your life miserably?"

That is I vowed to do. Til Death Do you Part. I think that if DH and I were to get so that we couldn't stand each other, we could find enough stuff to do seperately and keep us happy and still be "together". Heck, we have enough stuff to do now that sometimes we hardly see each other, LOL! Jeff isn't abusive, nor am I.

But I think I am very lucky. I love Jeff, but I feel he is more my best friend than anything else. And I'm very satisfied with that. Besides, who is to say that there is something better out there. The grass is always greener on the other side. Well, I won't ever find out if that is true, because usually, it's worse than what you've got, then you got nothing. There are no guarantees.

Gosh, that sounds like I'm unhappy and have no love for my husband, but I'm not! I love him very much. And even if he were to have an affair, I still wouldn't leave him. Til Death do us part. Period!

Oh, and out of curiousty sake - after I found out that my husband had cheated on me - if he'd wanted out of the relationship I'd have told him not to let the door hit him in the a$$ on his way out. And quite frankly, I'd have been within my biblical rights to do so.

Fern, the opening part of this thread actually is about making divorce legally harder to get, which is what would happen if one eliminates no-fault.

Some posts on this thread seem to be functioning under the assumption that all marriage vows are "...for richer, for poorer, till death do us part." Those vows, as far as I know, originated in Christian ceremonies. I know the Jewish ceremony didn't have them until the 20th century, and they are now optional. Certainly civil marriages make those vows optional. And Lynn pointed out that handfastings can be for specific lengths of time.

This is not a plea for multiculturalism in the forums; rather, I am pointing out that for people who never married "till death do us part" in the first place-- not because of irresponsibility, but because it is not part of their faith tradition-- saying "marriage is for life, period" is illogical.

Thanks for pointing that out, Becky. I never could get the link in Susannah's thread to work so was unable to read anything other than Danna's question asking her what she felt was bad about no fault divorce.

I hate to be dense here concerning wedding vows, but I guess I don't get it. I'm understanding what Lynn was saying about her own and how it was different from what the majority of us consider tradition, but what I'm understanding from your post is that it isn't unusual for other religions/ceremonies, etc. to not include the commitment of marriage for life. What the heck is their expectation of marriage? Why even bother?

I just wanted to pick up on what Honey said. What we might consider "for worse" is nothing compared to what used to be legal to do to wives (Like beating, rape, etc.) or considered "normal" for men (never helping around the house, complete lack of interest in a wife's life, complete inattention to children, occasional philandering, etc.). Fortunately we've decided that those kinds of relationships aren't OK (not that helping around the house or badly pretending to be interested in a spouse's friends aren't perennial issues!).

Total indifference and constant belittling is a kind of abuse that is not illegal, but it is extremely unhealthy for the spouse on the receiving end. And many men around my grandfather's age were raised to believe that that kind of treatment was all women were worth. I've seen those relationships many times.

As a Catholic I believe that our marriage is a sacrament (that is, a living sign of God's presence in the world) -- but I don't believe that faking it and putting up with someone's disrespecful behavior for life has anything to do with a sacrament.

For my part, I would forgive just about anything from my DH if he appeared willing to work on it. Short-term misery is pretty much a guarantee in marriage, as in life. Lifelong misery, on the other hand, should not be required of anyone.