In early modern Europe, Prussia took a pioneering role with Frederick the Great's 1757 edict allowing marriages to be dissolved on the ground of serious and continuous hostility between spouses, without pointing to any one guilty party.
Regarding marriage as a bourgeois institution, the new government transferred divorce jurisdiction from the Russian Orthodox Church to the state courts, which could grant it on application of either spouse.
[9][10] Economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, based on findings in their research, argue that domestic violence and female suicide decline in states that legalize no-fault divorce.
"[12] A 2010 New York Times editorial said that New York was "the only state where a court must find fault before granting a divorce unless the spouses have lived apart for a full year under a formal separation agreement — a proven formula for inviting false testimony, endless litigation and generally making divorce far more painful than it needs to be.
Lawyer L. M. Fenton states that "Feminist holdouts against New York's new [no-fault divorce] bill don't understand how family law affects women today", adding: "It also mystifies me that spouses could still, even in 2010, be forced to stay married to someone who refused to let go.
Upon the introduction of no-fault divorce in England and Wales in 2022, the United Kingdom Government stated that it would allow couples to focus on agreeing important arrangements for the future such as those involving children, finance and property as opposed to proving fault at a time when emotions are already running high.
The Divorce Act was amended in 1986 to reduce the separation period to one year, with no requirement to prove "fault" by either spouse.
In particular, the separation period required before a formal divorce can be shortened if "the continuation of the marriage would be an unreasonable hardship for the petitioner for reasons that lie in the person of the other spouse".
Divorce was obtained by filing a mutual consent document with the Russian Registry Office, or by the unilateral request of one party to the court.
The divorce law under the Bolsheviks did not penalize the husband with alimony, child support, or debtor's prison for non-payment, as every individual was to be provided for by the state anyway.
[21] The fault-based system as used in England and Wales prior to 2022 had been reported in the media as unnecessarily provocative, in that couples had to appropriate blame for the marriage breakdown.
[32] In the States of Wisconsin, Oregon, Washington, Nevada, Nebraska, Montana, Missouri, Minnesota, Michigan, Kentucky, Kansas, Illinois,[33] Iowa, Indiana, Hawaii, Florida, Colorado and California, a person seeking a divorce is not permitted to allege a fault-based ground (e.g. adultery, abandonment or cruelty).
For instance, under its original (1819) constitution, Alabama required not only the consent of a court of chancery for a divorce (and only "in cases provided for by law"), but equally that of two-thirds of both houses of the state legislature.
[41] One method popular in New York was referred to as "collusive adultery", in which the husband would check into a hotel with a "mistress" obtained for the occasion.
[42] This procedure was described by Supreme Court of California Associate Justice Stanley Mosk: Every day, in every superior court in the state, the same melancholy charade was played: the "innocent" spouse, generally the wife, would take the stand and, to the accompanying cacophony of sobbing and nose-blowing, testify under the deft guidance of an attorney to the spousal conduct that she deemed "cruel.
Or in some cases, a party deciding they wanted to marry someone else could combine a filing for divorce and a new marriage in one trip to Mexico.
American judges were deeply troubled by the "cognitive dissonance between the court's duty to uphold the formal law and its intention nevertheless to accede to the demands of the consumers of justice".
[45] As early as the 1930s, a treatise on American family law complained: In divorce litigation it is well known that the parties often seek to evade the statutory limitations and thus there is great danger of perjury, collusion, and fraud.
[46]Thus, advocates for no-fault divorce argued that the law should be changed to provide a straightforward procedure for ending a marriage, rather than forcing a couple who simply couldn't get along to choose between living together in "marital hell" or lying under oath in open court.
[50] The Act abolished California's action for divorce and replaced it with a proceeding for dissolution of marriage on the grounds of irreconcilable differences.
[53] Since the term "irretrievably broken" was not defined, the committee from the American Bar Association (ABA) Family Law Section disapproved of this draft of the Uniform Marriage and Divorce Act.
[53] In response, the NCCUSL committee added a 180-day separation requirement in order for judges to find that the marriage had been irretrievably broken.
[53] However, the NCCUSL committee also added language to allow judges to grant a petitioner a divorce if "there is serious marital discord adversely affecting one or both parties toward the marriage.
"[53] The committee from the ABA Family Law Section objected to the ability of a petitioner to avoid the 180-day separation requirement by asserting "serious marital discord".
[53] In his letter recommending that the American Bar Association House of Delegates not approve the amended draft proposed by the NCCUSL, Arnold J. Gibbs, the chairman of the ABA Family Law Section, stated that the NCCUSL's proposed draft created a rubber stamp type of divorce procedure.
He wrote: "The creation of a mere 'rubber stamp type' of divorce procedure would not be in the best interests of the family, its individual members, and society in general.
In the 2020s, conservative activists, including Steven Crowder, Matt Walsh, Michael Knowles, as well as commentator Tim Pool, and some state Republican parties have advocated for the abolition or restriction of no-fault divorce.
[59] Columnist Molly Jong-Fast opined that Justice Thomas's opinion in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization (a ruling that overturned the right to abortion established by Roe v. Wade) regarding "'a duty to "correct the error" established in [Obergefell and Lawrence]' ... could be the perfect maxim for men's rights activists, who've been galvanized by the end of Roe and seized another target to reverse the gains made by women: no-fault divorce.
"[60] On January 18, 2024, Senator Dusty Deevers introduced Oklahoma SB 1958, a bill aimed at modifying the grounds for divorce in the state.