No-Fault Divorce

Report Outline
Liberailization of Laws on Divorce
Changing Attitudes of U.S. Society
Causes and Social Effects of Divorce
Special Focus

Liberailization of Laws on Divorce

Departure From Adversary Court Proceedings

Divorce laws in the United States are beginning to reflect a growing realism about the actual causes of marital breakup. More than a dozen states have adopted “no-fault” divorce legislation under which the court does not so much dissolve a marriage as it gives formal and legal recognition to the fact that a marriage has already died. No-fault divorce replaces the traditional action by which one partner in a marriage sues for divorce, bringing charges of marital misbehavior against the other partner, who becomes the defendant and, if convicted, may bear certain penalties for his offense.

That is the familiar adversary procedure against which critics of divorce laws have railed for many decades. In actual practice, however, even where the law is still in keeping with the adversary rule, the no-fault principle is likely to prevail. This is because nine out of 10 divorce cases are not contested. An uncontested case usually means that the partners have agreed to the divorce and to the terms of the settlement before the case is brought to court. When a case is contested, the point of disagreement is not usually the preservation or dissolution of the marriage, but an ancillary issue of support, property division, or custody of the children.

Widening acceptance of no-fault grounds for divorce is indicative of the changing attitude of the American people toward marriage itself, a diminishing regard for the “till death us do part” mandate of the nuptial rite. It signals a fading away of an ambivalence toward divorce—accepting it yet deploring it—that had found expression in the form of strict laws and easy evasion. A revulsion against the hypocrisy of laws so contrary to custom and so conducive to perjury has also played a part in the rising demand for a more honest legal basis for divorce.