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NO-FAULT 40TH ANNIVERSARY
No-fault law marks its 40th
The Washington Times
September 22, 2009
Cheryl Wetzstein
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
This month marks the 40th anniversary of the earthquake that rocked
the American family. Such an anniversary deserves to be remembered.
On Sept. 4, 1969, California Gov. Ronald Reagan signed a "no-fault"
divorce law.
California wasn't the first state to pass a no-fault provision -
that honor went to Oklahoma (1953), followed by Alaska (1963) and
New York (1967), according to the 2004 Handbook of Contemporary
Families. But California was the first state to cast out "fault" in
divorce entirely and replace it with "irreconcilable differences."
Within 15 years, every state had followed suit in some way, and the
so-called Divorce Revolution was on its way.
What motivated people to enact no-fault divorce laws?
One reason was that, in a fault system, a divorce required at least
one spouse to prove that the other had committed adultery,
abandonment or abuse.
This meant hiring a private detective and/or collecting
incriminating evidence for the court.
Or - and this happened far too often - couples who both wanted the
divorce had to resort to manufacturing evidence - faking
abandonment, for instance.
This kind of fraud insulted the court, legal professionals
complained.
And then there were the genuinely ugly divorces, in which both
spouses hurled blame and evidence at each other. Everyone suffered,
including the children.
Thus, the noble purpose of no-fault divorce was to remove the
contentious, annoying legal requirement for couples to prove
anything other than their desire to divorce. After all, the thinking
went, if marriage was the union of two people, and one person wanted
out, then the union was no longer viable.
Except that wasn't the whole story.
"The key to understanding the problem is to recognize that the
grounds for divorce did not go from fault to no-fault; they went
from mutual consent to unilateral," said Allen Parkman, University
of New Mexico economics professor and author of books on divorce.
Under the fault system, "most divorces were negotiated and
eventually [happened] based on mutual consent," Mr. Parkman said.
But once one person could legally end the marriage, "there was no
longer any need for negotiations."
The 40 years of divorce-on-demand has left a "poisonous legacy,"
wrote W.
Bradford Wilcox, University of Virginia sociology professor and
director of the National Marriage Project, who detailed his
observations in an article in the new National Affairs quarterly.
Divorce expert JUDITH WALLERSTEIN said in 2005 that the number of
children affected by divorce was 1 million children a year, since
1973. These young people's passionate, even pathological, fear of
divorce continues to reverberate through the culture via rampant
cohabiting and delayed marriage.
Going back to California's 1969 no-fault law, it appears that it was
also a case of the personal becoming political.
According to "Stolen Vows," a 2002 book by JUDY PAREJKO, the
California lawmaker (James A. Hayes) who championed no-fault divorce
was embroiled in a bitter divorce from his stay-at-home wife and
mother of his four children.
Removing fault didn't help Mr. Hayes in his divorce, but it
certainly crushed the "negotiating power" of other stay-at-home
wives, Ms. Parejko wrote.
And when Mr. Reagan signed the bill, he was apparently still
smarting from his 1948 divorce, which actress Jane Wyman obtained
because of his "mental cruelty." Mr. Reagan later said signing the
no-fault law was "one of the worst mistakes he ever made in office,"
son Michael Reagan wrote in his book, "Twice Adopted."
Michael was 3 when his father and Miss Wyman divorced. His
description of divorce - "where two adults take everything that
matters to a child - the child's home, family, security, and sense
of being loved and protected - and they smash it all up, leave it in
ruins on the floor, then walk out and leave the child to clean up
the mess" - still resonates today, fault or no-fault.
For more Wetzstein articles:
<http://www.washingtontimes.com/staff/cheryl-wetzstein/>
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