Divorce in the United States
The British colonies that became the United States individually adapted English common law on divorce to their religious, economic, and ethnic differences.
Other proposed explanations include the popular acceptance of divorce as an alternative to marital unhappiness, decay of the belief in immortality and future punishment, discontent with the existing constitution of society, the habits of mobility created by better transportation, and the greater independence of women resulting in their enlarged legal rights and greater opportunities of self support.
The women's rights movement debated the issue of whether to allow divorce, with Jane Swisshelm and Elizabeth Cady Stanton as early supporters, with Horace Greeley and Antoinette Brown Blackwell opposed.
[5][6]: 156 Against Stanton, Lucy Stone sought to remove the advocacy of divorce from the women's platform to prevent the appearance of moral laxity.
Thus, a spouse suing for divorce in most states had to show a "fault" such as abandonment, cruelty, incurable mental illness, or adultery.
"[9] Divorce was barred if evidence revealed any hint of complicity between spouses to manufacture grounds for divorce, such as if the suing party engaged in procurement or connivance (contributing to the fault, such as by arranging for adultery), condonation (forgiving the fault either explicitly or by continuing to cohabit after knowing of it), or recrimination (the suing spouse also being guilty).
[10] Providing accommodations and other amenities for visitors, who could not leave Nevada during the six weeks, became a major Reno industry; greeters met the arriving trains, and there were a variety of divorce ranches.
[11] In 1942, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Williams v. North Carolina that other states had to recognize these divorces, under the "full faith and credit" clause of the U.S. Constitution.
[16] The National Center for Health Statistics reported that from 1975 to 1988 in the US, in families with children present, wives filed for divorce in approximately two-thirds of cases.
Richard Peterson calls Weitzman's methodology into question, using the same data to calculate a 27% decrease for women and a 10% increase for men.
By the seventh wedding anniversary, the divorce rate among highly educated people who married in the early 2000s is 11%, while that for couples without college degrees is 17%.
[15][25][26] Since the mid-1990s, three states have enacted covenant marriage laws which give couples the option to make divorce more difficult, Louisiana,[27][28] Arkansas,[29] and Arizona.
[30] For example, couples who choose covenant marriage may be required to undergo counseling before a divorce can be granted, or to submit their conflicts to mediation.
[34] The following states use community property regimes: Arizona, California, Idaho, Louisiana, Nevada, New Mexico, Texas, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Once the requesting spouse can reasonably demonstrate that he/she has given the best effort in good faith to secure an independent income but failed, only then the case is taken into consideration.
In Mississippi, Texas and Tennessee, for example, there are 135 Appellate Cases in addition to 47 sections of State Statute that shape divorce law.
For divorce judgments dated January 1, 2019 and later, under federal law spousal support is treated as not-taxable and non-deductible for either party.
Similarly, in 2013, Colorado signed into law alimony reform, creating a standardized non-presumptive guideline upon which courts can rely.
[54][66][67] Some of the critical issues that proponents and opponents of alimony reform disagree upon are: In 2012, bills were introduced in the New Jersey Assembly and Senate.
[77] California, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Oklahoma, New York, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, and West Virginia have all passed laws that allow for the modification or termination of alimony upon demonstration that the recipient is cohabitating with another person.
The parties are empowered to make their own decisions based on their own needs and interests, but with complete information and full professional support.
At the end of the mediation process, the separating parties will have typically developed a tailored divorce agreement that they can submit to the court.
A "qualified domestic relations order" (QDRO) assigns to an alternate payee the right to receive all or a portion of a participant’s retirement plan benefits.
[87] In their 1997 study titled "Child Custody Policies and Divorce Rates in the US," Kuhn and Guidubaldi find it reasonable to conclude that women anticipate advantages to being single, rather than remaining married.
In 2002 (latest survey data as of 2012),[89] 29% of first marriages among women aged 15–44 were disrupted (ended in separation, divorce or annulment) within 10 years.
[89] More recently, having spoken with academics and National Survey of Family Growth representatives, PolitiFact.com estimated in 2012 that the lifelong probability of a marriage ending in divorce is 40%–50%.
King conducted on behalf of the Education Resources Information Center examined whether crossing racial boundaries increased the risk of divorce.
[95] Intermarriages that did not cross a racial barrier, which was the case for White/Hispanic White couples, showed statistically similar likelihoods of divorcing as White/White marriages.
[95] A 2011 study at the University of Iowa found that a woman's loss of virginity before age 18 was correlated with a greater number of occurrences of divorce within the first 10 years of marriage.
This is because educated individuals make higher incomes in most cases, which result in less financial stress when couples set down to get married.
