Over on the Family Scholars Blog, Brad Wilcox (who I’ve mentioned before on “Alas,” here and here) writes:
So if an abused woman can’t document her abuse, she should be forced to remain in the marriage?
La Lubu, recalling her own abusive marriage, writes:
It may be that “easy divorces” (it’s amazing that Wilcox has talked to so many men who have been through painful no-fault divorces and can still use the ridiculous, inaccurate phrase “easy divorces”) have hurt women, although nothing in Wilcox’s letter supports that contention. But it’s beyond doubt that “hard divorces” hurt some women by trapping them in abusive marriages. Protecting the interests of only those abused women who can document their abuse (“honey, stop hitting me for a minute so I can set up the vidcam”) is no solution.
For an ironic contrast to Dr. Wilcox’s letter, check out this study (.pdf link) on the effects of no-fault divorce on family violence. According to one of the study’s authors:
More generally, easy access to divorce redistributes marital power from the party interested in preserving the marriage to the partner who wants out. In most instances, this resulted in an increase in marital power for women, and a decrease in power for men.
Our analysis of US data revealed the legislative change had caused female suicide to decline by about a fifth, domestic violence to decline by about a third, and intimate femicide – the husband’s murder of his wife – to decline by about a tenth.
So what causes the decline in suicide, domestic violence and intimate femicide? According to the authors of the paper, it’s a change in power dynamics within marriage – men are less likely to become abusive if women have more power to pack their bags and leave. (La Luba is a bit skeptical of that explanation).
Personally, I would have liked to see the authors do a multivariate analysis accounting for the growth of battered women’s shelters, which occurred at about the same time, probably took place in mostly the same (relatively liberal) states, and could reasonably be expected to have similar effects. It’s possible that some of the beneficial effects they attribute to no-fault divorce were in fact the result of the growing availability of other resources to help battered women leave abusive relationships.
Nonetheless, the same basic principle – that the harder it is for women to leave marriages, the more danger abused women are in – applies whether we’re talking about battered women’s shelters or about no-fault divorce. And it makes me extremely skeptical of folks who, like Dr. Wilcox, want to do away with “easy divorces,” and seem heedless of the consequences to women.
Note that Mr. Wilcox couldn’t even bring himself to leave the quotes off from “easy divorces.”
Well, I for one am grateful for no-fault divorces, as they’re known here in California. It enabled me many years ago to leave a verbally and emotionally abusive husband without having to be dragged through court (fortunately, we had no kids). I’d worked to help financially support him through graduate school, typed and edited his papers while he was in school, and did his resume and cover letter which allowed him to get a better paying job than any I’d had, and I left the marriage with the clothes on my back, my turntable and albums, and nothing else. Anyone who thinks it should have been “harder” for me to finally walk out should have to have lived with him for a month or so.
If anything, it should be harder for people to get married, not divorced.
The drive against no-fault and “easy” divorces is really about preventing women from leaving their marriages, since women file for most divorces. While there has been some criticism of no-fault, one thing it has done is make it easier for abused women to leave their marriages.
“And we cannot tolerate documented cases of domestic abuse.”
Clearly it is the documentation that can’t be tolerated, else why specify.
Trish, What’s the ratio of female to male divorce filing?
a-fucking-men
lucia, supposedly it is something like 85% of women filing. Of course, that doesn’t take into account who actually leaves or ends the marriage; if husbands are more likely to just walk away, but the wife is the one who actually files the legal paperwork, the stats wouldn’t reflect that.
Lucia, last time I checked, women filed about 80-85% of the time.
I just saw that Mythago answered your question, too, Lucia.
>> if husbands are more likely to just walk away, but the wife is the one who actually files the legal paperwork, the stats wouldn’t reflect that
Actually, I’m familiar with the “just walking away” and then letting the other partner file. I was going to ask if anyone knew stats for that… but then decided to edit! my question– because I thought, “Oh, just cuz’ I’ve known that to happen doesn’t mean it could be commone!” LOL!
Did you see that Spain seems to be getting ready to permit no fault divorces in with very short separations? (I’m waiting to read more details.) What I’ve found is here and here Now, I have to say, 10 days sounds pretty short– but the articles don’t give any clue about the circumstances where the separation period is only 10 days. If there were violence, 10 days doesn’t seem short!
Marriage is supposed to be for life. Last time I knew, the vow went “for better or for worse”. Problem is, as soon as the worse hits, a divorce is filed.
Divorce should not only be harder, but next to impossible. There should also be provisions for filing a suit against a partner who files for a divorce. Its called breech of contract. When you sign a marriage license, you sign a lifetime contract. When you try to break that contract…its breech of contract.
Problem is, as soon as the worse hits, a divorce is filed.
That’s right. As soon as my wife was diagnosed with a chronic illness, I filed for divorce. Oh, wait. that’s not right. I’m still married to her. You must be talking about my first marriage where wife number uno cheated on me repeatedly, was abusive to me, etc. After only 10 years of that I filed for divorce. You’re absolutely correct that as soon as the “worse” hit that I filed for divorce. No difference between “as soon as” and “10 years.” Nope. No difference at all.
You speak from a position of supreme ignorance and lack of knowledge about marriages that end in divorce. As a result, your opinion is utterly worthless.
When you sign a marriage license, you sign a lifetime contract.
Heh. No.
When you sign a marriage license, you sign a lifetime contract.
It’s precisely this sort of thinking that makes me happy I’m single.
I am the daughter of a couple who divorced 35 years ago, when it was necessary to assign blame. My father was a self-righteous, somewhat controlling, agonizingly miserable person; my mother was a self-righteous, holier-than-thou prig. Both of them portrayed the other as The Root of all Evil at every opportunity. It took 2 years of vigorous shitslinging, cost thousands upon thousands(!) of dollars, lawyers and social workers and judges and therapists listening to and pronouncing judgement on our most personal and painful family troubles, and left every member of the family in emotional despair for decades.
I am the wife of a man whose ex-wife left him, not because they hit “worse,” but because after she had her desired children, she informed him that she was actually in a secret lesbian “marriage,” and wanted to be free of him (except for child support). Yes, she got what she wanted, and no, it wasn’t fair. But what if she had been forced to make up charges against him? Perhaps, to subsantiate her claims (or because of the anger generated by the divorce itself) she’d have attempted to divide him from his kids? Or, what if, the charges being made up, she couldn’t have “proved” that she “deserved” a divorce?
Divorce is never “easy.” Why make it “hard?” I vote for no-fault.
I would argue that if two adults wish to end their marriage they should be allowed to do so on whatever terms are real. If they simply can’t stand each other, then so be it.
The problem is where children are concerned. Two people without children can simply divide their stuff and get on with their lives.
The problem is not no fault divorce — the problem is no fault re-definition of the family relationship between parent and child.
I live in NY which is still a fault state. From what I can see there’s almost no difference in having fault. All most couples do is formally separate for a year at which point it becomes official.
While NY is not a “no-fault” state, neither is it a “fault” state. That is to say, NY does not have no-fault divorce as defined in many other states. However, you do not have to file for divorce with any specific cause. Rather, you need to execute a seperation agreement (which does not require a cause to be defined) and then you may obtain a divorce, without assigning fault, one year later. As a result, NY is, in effect, a no-fault state with a 1 year waiting period.
In states that have neither no-fault divorce nor divorce resulting from a seperation agreement in which no fault is assigned, the spouse suing for divorce must assign fault. Things like adultery, etc. Usually, then (if I have this right) both spouses must show up in court & accuse and admit, respectively, the thing that is causing the divorce to be sued for. There is a financial and emotional cost to this process. There is a difference.
I am being sued for divorced by my wife for extreme cruelty. I have never laid a hand on my wife or cursed her. We have argued, but what couple does not. My wife was married previously to the husband of her son. I loved her and her son with everything. We married in a curch of God and swore to work through the good and the bad in a committed relationship.
Ohio is a contractual state for marriage. I feel she is in breech of our marital contract. I am glad to no that no fault is not in Ohio or this would be over already.
The downside is the model my wife is setting is for her son in relationships. If she is not happy, she can just leave, the son will follow. She is very self- righteous. This is where no fault enables the divorce process to lead to a high rate of divorce. My wife always told me her first divorce was a piece of cake.
John,
I’m sorry you’re upset your wife is leaving you, but if a woman wants to get a divorce from her husband, would it be better for her children if she is forced to “manufacture” a reason to be allowed a divorce, (for example, cheating on you, or abusing you or your children) rather than being allowed to say “this isn’t working for me, I don’t want to be married to you anymore?” Would you really rather that the law force an unhappy spouse to stay in a marriage if they can’t prove a reason good enough? Which model is better for your children?
If a woman is being abused, it’s hardly a no-fault divorce, now is it?
Divorce is far too easy in our culture. I take my marriage vows seriously. Short of abuse, infidelity, and illegal acts, divorce shouldn’t happen. Marriage is freaking hard work – for both parties. My 18th wedding anniversary is this month (July 2006), and I can honestly say that the only times our marriage was in trouble, were the times when we got lazy and stopped working on it.
No-fault divorce is just an excuse for wanting a different partner.
If a woman is being abused but is unable to prove it in a courtroom, then yes, no-fault divorce is a necessary (although not sufficient) condition of her getting free. (And even if she can prove it in a courtroom, it seems to me cruel to put her through that horrible process rather than the marginally less horrible no-fault process.)
It’s illogical to assume that what’s true for you is true for every other couple in the world.
I doubt this is true – you’re just attacking people who get divorced because you’re unable to come up with a logical argument to support your views.
That aside, even if you were right, so what? If your current partner abuses you or makes you miserable, then wanting a different partner is a reasonable response.
How would she unable to prove it in a courtroom? Bruises and broken bones are hard to refute. It’s easy to document events – that’s what happens in the workplace all the time. What kind of abuse are you talking about, exactly?
For any relationship to work, it has to be worked at. It’s illogical to assume that honeymoons last forever.
If someone has a legitimate reason for divorce, no-fault divorce is unnecessary. If it took a little more effort to get a divorce, perhaps we would have more children grow up in intact families. That’s not a bad thing.
Kelly, I was seriously abused for six years in my first marriage. He held a gun to my head on numerous occasions. He raped me more than once. Nearly every day, he said things to me or about me designed to make me feel incompetent, crazy, small, and weak. He didn’t hit me every day. He didn’t hit me every week. Most often when he did hit me, he didn’t leave bruises.
He, like many sociopaths, was very charming and likeable. During my pregnancy with my oldest son, he held me virtually captive in a one room apartment forty miles from the nearest town of any size. He raped me repeatedly. He took the phone with him when he went to work so I couldn’t call anyone (he made the mistake once of “merely” cutting the cord, and I was able to splice it and call for help, which is how I escaped).
The neighbors where we lived thought I was crazy and he was a saint for putting up with me. He was sleeping with the only woman that ever came to my house regularly. I was completely isolated from my family and my friends, and he had convinced them that I was dangerously unstable. The evidence? I kept asking people to help me get away from him, and I kept saying things like “I wish he were dead”. Divorce for abuse? You’re kidding me. His word against mine, and conveniently I had had a very serious head injury two years before the end of my marriage (not his fault, believe it or not). I had a family history of bipolar disorder.
Only no-fault divorce and the fact that I moved far enough away that it was no longer fun to abuse me (took three moves, btw) allowed me to escape him, and even then the laws of the state I was in tried to demand (because of joint custody laws) that even though he had already moved out of state, to a nearby county in another state that I couldn’t leave the vicinity until my son was 18. Fortunately I found a lawyer that was reasonable about the interpretation of the law and my divorce decree, and moved away anyhow.
While it’s not an inherently bad thing for children to grow up in two parent families, it is an inherently bad thing for children to witness the emotional, sexual, and physical torture of one parent by another. I have run across numerous examples in my work of women who when they report abuse are not believed because “he’s such a nice guy”, or worse are penalized in custody for “failure to protect” when they could not protect themselves from an abuser, let alone the children. No-fault divorce is necessary to recognize that both men and women are adults and have legitimate reasons, which they may or may not want to disclose, for freely ending a contract they entered into freely.
I’m sorry that happened to you, odanu. Were you able to get on with your life? Are your children ok? Did he finally let go?
Please don’t misunderstand me; I know abuse happens. And I agree that children are not better off in abusive households. But I think your example is an extreme one.
My example is typical of domestic violence, not extreme. I volunteered in DV shelters for years, and as a social worker, I run into DV all the time even when I’m not in the field. Just today I helped a woman who is mentally ill and was thrown out of her car bodily by her boyfriend half a continent away from home. Most batterers are charming guys. They are extremely good at making the abuse invisible or appear to be justified. People on the outside of the relationship generally only see the “honeymoon” side of the relationship, and the domestic torture goes unnoticed. In years in the field, while DV is extremely common, visible bruises are very rare. Again, no-fault divorce is extremely necessary for the protection of women.
Again, no-fault divorce is extremely necessary for the protection of women.
Perhaps under the old regime. But why couldn’t we simply have a requirement of fault, with a presumption that someone who says that they’re being abused (or that their spouse is cheating or what have you) is not required to prove that in order to move forward with the divorce?
Perhaps under the old regime. But why couldn’t we simply have a requirement of fault, with a presumption that someone who says that they’re being abused (or that their spouse is cheating or what have you) is not required to prove that in order to move forward with the divorce?
Because abusers get extremely angry when found out—even angrier than they get when they realize you aren’t going to tolerate their abuse any longer. Guess who’s going to be under the gun when an abuser is being publically recognized as an abuser, in court no less? The same person whose life is at stake when leaving the abuser (something that bears repetition, since so many people tend to ask “why did you stay?” Answer: because survival depends on a well-arranged escape plan, that’s why. Abusers are tenacious.) If you read my post, you’d notice that I credited no-fault divorce with the reason I’m alive. I left him. I had divorce papers delivered to him. He exploded, tracked me down, and broke into my home at 4:00AM, wearing a ninja suit, camoflage paint, and several knives (thank god he didn’t know how to find a “clean” gun). There are several reasons why I’m alive, but I’m not forgetting that one of the reasons is that no-fault divorce gave him an “easy out”. He didn’t have to admit either in public, or to himself, that he was an abuser. Which meant that he didn’t have to kill me for revenge, for “destroying his future.”
I know in my bones that if I had been in the position of having to “prove” abuse, I’d’a been shit outta luck. He never gave me a black eye. Never gave me a broken bone. And most people, like Kelly here, think anything less is simply not abuse. That sock in the gut that doubles you over (and leaves no bruises)? Doesn’t count, unless a someone else is a witness. Otherwise, it’s “he said, she said.” Those whacks in the side and back of the head, that thick hair prevents from showing the necessary bruises? Those don’t count either. Kidney punches? Again, not enough visible evidence. And those bruises on the thighs and shins must have happened at work or something. Shit.
But like odanu said, abusers don’t hit every day, or even necessarily every week. Even so, it wasn’t the kicks and punches that did the real damage. Let me bring that back, so it’ll have a chance to sink in: it wasn’t the kicks and punches that did the real damage. No. The real damage occurred long before the blows started. Abusive behavior escalates. First, I was subjected to a helluva lot of verbal abuse. Which isn’t really abuse right? I mean, “sticks and stones”, right? And just because your husband calls you a bitch, isn’t a reason to get divorced, right? And a cunt? And when he spits on you, it still isn’t a reason to get divorced, right? Because it washes right off, and hey, he’s just doing that because he’s drunk, right? And besides, he’s just trying to get a rise out of you. Don’t give in. It’s just too easy to get a divorce. Besides, eventually he’ll get tired of yelling, and he’ll go pass out. It’ll only last two or three more hours, before he’ll go to bed. Those holes in the wall can be fixed; that’s what they make spackle for. We can buy a new chair/table/radio/phone/name-something-else-he-broke-in-a-fit-of-anger. You don’t get divorced just because he breaks material things, right? I mean, it’s just stuff, right? And if I hide my schoolwork and books, I won’t have to worry about digging them out of the trash. And yeah, he spend all the money in the account, but he’s just bad with money, that’s all. It means I just have to keep some back, in case of emergencies—gosh, I hope that doesn’t mean I’m a lousy wife, that I keep a little cash back from my job. I know it’s wrong to hide money from your husband, even if I did earn it, but I really don’t know how else to keep the checks from bouncing again. It’s just a “reserve fund”. He’s under so much stress. I almost hate getting up in the morning. It’s like I’m rubbing it in his face that I have a job and he doesn’t. It’s not his fault that he had to quit that job—that other guy just kept fuckin’ with him all the time. And his boss was a real asshole. And then that other job? Same thing. He just hasn’t found the right job. He has such bad luck. He’s a really smart guy—he just needs to focus on school! I wish he would have stuck with it. (note: he started, and dropped out of, four colleges during our marriage. ) It won’t be like this forever. He’ll find his path, and then it will be ok. He won’t be mad all the time. Maybe he’ll quit drinking—I mean, he’s not really a drunk, right? Because he never drinks in the morning. And he doesn’t shake. And it’s not like he hits me……
Until he started that, too.
Yeah, that was me, fifteen-twenty years ago. A lifetime ago. A life time ago. And how was I able to put myself through all those hoops of rationalization? If you guessed, “because you grew up with it”, hell—you just won the grand prize! Because that’s how the pattern repeats itself—folks put themselves through those hoops because divorce is wrong. Their children witness it, and behave accordingly. Ever listen to Meshell N’DegeOcello’s version of “Makes Me Wanna Holla?” I can’t listen to it without getting chills. That was my life.
Seems like everybody wants to Monday-morning quarterback the divorced. Thing is though, you can’t. Know why? You weren’t there. You weren’t there behind those closed doors that sociopaths thrive behind. No-fault saves lives. It saved mine. My having been abused only would have been proven by my murder. Only then, would some judge have thought “huh. I guess she was telling the truth.” As it was, the judge at the bench in my divorce (my husband didn’t show, so it was quick) just said asked me a few questions, then said, “ok, we’re done. now you can go out and do it again, young lady.” He had no clue, and no respect. But it was over, and that was what really mattered.
Even without the horror of abuse there are some marriages which can’t and shouldn’t be saved. My parents had one. From what I’ve gathered talking to family and friends, their relationship was volatile from the start, they married far too young, and within a decade they were regretting it.
Then Dad had a bad car accident which rendered him a paraplegic. Mum stayed to look after him, and they tried to keep the marriage together. Ten more years of steadily growing resentment on both sides; horrible arguments that my brother and I had to witness. I prayed to deities I didn’t even believe in that they would see the light and split up, but they waited until my brother and I were nearly adults — by which time neither of us kids believed in marriage. Staying together “for the children” always rings hollow for us now.
So if they’d been forced to stay together, what then? Wait until the screaming matches escalated into physical violence, just so they could cite cruelty?
It’s nice to know everyone has all these wonderful personal experiences to share. With respect to your own situations all good on you. Don’t use that as the measuring stick against someone elses situation though. Despite whatever similarities you notice they are not all the same.
I hear alot of interesting excuses put forward as to why things can’t work but I’d definitely be alot more keen to put forward some better reasons why they can.
My thoughts on this are. Be a man, take it in stride, don’t lose patience, do your own thing and let her come to you. Never talk about the relationship. If she tries to bring the subject up try to shift the talk to something else she finds enjoyable. If you can’t do that keep your mouth closed and just listen to her and let her have her say without injecting your own opinion.
Marriage is like the rest of life. No pain no gain. Standing your ground and really listening to the other person are not mutually exclusive.
At some stage either you or your partner will come to the conclusion it’s either worth it or it’s not. For those that think it is put that in your actions and refrain from talking about it.
Life is struggle. Get busy living or get busy dying.