The Fight Against Divorce
May 16, 2010
Cynthia Davis
On her website, Davis, who is the mother of seven children, writes:
Under our current laws the innocent spouse can lose their home, finances and custody of their child / children while the guilty frequently get to walk away with a check for the marital equity and very little responsibility for ruining the lives of all the others involved.
June Carbone, law professor at the University of Missouri, is one of the most outspoken critics of the bill. She raises the specter of “battered women” who will be unable to obtain a divorce because the standard for abuse is too high. In this article, in which Carbone attributes provisions to the bill that are not stated in the text, she objects that spouses must prove physical abuse with concrete evidence or testimony from non-family members and that the abuse must occur more than once.
The bill waives the requirement for proven abuse, adultery or desertion in the cases of couples who have been living apart for two years. This seems to be a serious weakness in the measure. It means that a spouse could leave the home and obtain a unilateral divorce by simply waiting.
Not surprisingly, the state’s lawyers have come out against the new bill, partly out of what they claim to be their magnanimous concern for children.
Jesse, who sent the above links, writes:
The Missouri Bar Center, what I assume to be the Missouri branch of the American Bar Association, has officially come out as being opposed to Missouri House Bill 1234, the bill that would reinstitute fault divorce if it was passed. Here is a quote from a letter issued by The Missouri Bar Executive Committee to Representative Cynthia Davis:
“At their meeting on January 21, 2010, the Executive Committee reviewed House Bill 1234, which changes laws regarding marriage license fees and dissolution of marriage. The Executive Committee found provisions in the bill that reinstate the requirement of a finding of fault in dissolution proceedings and affect judicial administration to be within the legislative scope of The Missouri Bar. Strict ‘fault divorce’ was abandoned in Missouri many years ago because it was found to promote animosity between the parties, have a damaging effect on children of the marriage and increase legal costs of dissolution. The bill’s provision requiring court clerks to return the entire filing fee upon withdrawal of a petition for dissolution or legal separation within one year imposes an undue burden on an already financially stressed judicial system. For these reasons, The Missouri Bar opposes House Bill 1234.”
The following link is interesting because there are a huge number of comments included with reactions to this proposed legislation in Missouri.
Jesse adds:
There is a group in Missouri called Ozarks Marriage Matters. I haven’t found a direct connection between Ozarks Marriage Matters and this bill being proposed by Rep. Cynthia Davis but the group uses the same catch phrase of “marriage matters” that Cynthia Davis uses and the group is a pro-family pro-marriage group. Something particularly interesting about Ozarks Marriage Matters is that it was started by faculty of the School of Professional Psychology at Forest Institute. Under the “About OMM” tab on their website, it says the group started as a small group of colleagues at the Forest Institute in September 2002. Imagine that, a grass roots pro-family pro-marriage apparently socially conservative group started by faculty at a school of psychology in Missouri. Now it makes perfect sense from the point of view of their profession, but I thought psychologists and counselors and such were a bunch of liberals and feminists. I suppose not all of them, it appears.
As a mission statement the group says:
“Ozarks Marriage Matters (OMM), is a community based, nonprofit initiative, dedicated to strengthening families through education, partnerships, and mobilization. Our aim is to bring the Ozarks community together to strengthen families by encouraging and supporting a marriage-friendly culture.
OMM advocates for strong, healthy, life-long marriage, and promotes involvement of both mothers and fathers to be active in the lives of their children. We work to bring together an inclusive group of citizens; business, civic and religious leaders; and others who believe that marriage matters – and that we can make a difference.”
There is another effort to repeal no-fault divorce in the state of Michigan. State Senator Michele McManus, R- Lake Leelanau, sponsored Michigan Senate Bill 1127 on February 10, 2010.
The bill is being promoted by Marriage Savers, a Christian organization that is national in scope. The president of Marriage Savers, Mike McManus (no relation to Michele McManus) made a presentation in Missouri on behalf of the legislation that Cynthia Davis is sponsoring in that state on April 21, 2010.
Here is the text of the Michigan bill, which is also supported by the American Fanily Association of Michigan.
— Comments —
Laura F. writes:
That Missouri bill sounds like a step in the right direction. Anyone who is interested in the effect of divorce on children should read The Unexpected Legacy of Divorce by Judith Wallerstein. It has a number of fascinating case studies. One of the things that jumps out at you is that the children whose parents stayed married despite the fact that they didn’t get along well were much happier than children whose parents divorced.
Laura writes:
Judith Wallerstein followed a group of children from their teen years through adulthood, interviewing them regularly. She found that the effects of divorce lasted well into adulthood. Many of the interviewees had difficulties establishing marriages themselves. I highly recommend her books, although ultimately she believes the solution to easy divorce is more marriage counselors.
Jesse writes:
A third state where legislation to ban no-fault divorce has been proposed is Oklahoma. Sally Kern, R- Oklahoma City, introduced Oklahoma House Bill 2279 on December 9, 2009. The bill has already been defeated however. It was voted down in the state House Judiciary Committee in a 7 to 3 vote by February 23, 2010.
I’d like to point out. All three of the divorce reform laws against no-fault divorce that I have found being proposed in the last year were proposed by female state legislators. What’s up with that? Is the message that men are not allowed to be so radical as to actually be against no-fault divorce?
Lydia Sherman writes:
I helped a woman who had been married 30 years, whose husband had suddenly divorced her. She had no say in the matter. I read the law which said that no-fault divorce was created to prevent animosity and reduce the pain of divorce. It does not. It creates more of it. A person cannot even find out what is wrong, or fix a marriage. Once someone files against them, the marriage is over, whether or not they show up in court. This woman had no success in contesting the divorce. The court refused to provide counseling, which was offered for free. Divorce is a done-deal, and all the lawyers and judges have their hands in the couple’s estate. The longer they are married, the more they can drag out the court proceedings, and the more money they can get from the couple. In tears, this woman testified in court that she did not want the divorce; that she wanted to work things out. This was used against her as “unnecessarily prolonging the pain of divorce.” In the end, the lawyers got $80,000 in fees, after two years of court dates. No-fault divorce is the same as the divorce Jesus spoke of “because of the hardness of your hearts.” A person could just say, “I divorce thee” and it was done. That is what no-fault divorce, wrongly named, amounts to. The second a person contacts a lawyer, the marriage is over. The divorce takes on a life of its own and the unwilling partner is left in the fear and horror of not knowing what is going to happen in their future. The judges and lawyers ought to be sued for terrorizing the home. There is no such thing as no-fault, or reducing the anguish of a divorce. No-fault divorces are more painful. The innocent party in this case was found to have fault, and told she was illegally delaying the process of divorce. She was accused of hiding property and failure to disclose all assets, which was untrue. Every effort was made to find fault with her, but the court illegally recorded that she was hostile, only because she did not want the divorce. No one wins in a no-fault divorce case.
