Should No-Fault Divorce Laws be Modified?
Did you know that four out of ever five people who divorce, did not want a divorce? Due to no-fault divorce laws the majority of those who go through a divorce but want to save their marriage have no recourse.
In other words, no-fault divorce laws favor the minority of those who wish to divorce, not the majority. Seems a bit skewed to me.
My ex wanted a divorce, I didn’t. He got what he wanted and was able to walk away from our marriage with 83% of his income leaving me to raise two sons with what I feel was minimal financial support from him.
I had been a stay at home mom for 14 years. It was a mutual decision, one that he first insisted upon. His mother had stayed home so he wanted the same for his children. To begin with I thought it an antiquated idea but once I had my oldest the idea of leaving him and going back to work was not something I could entertain.
I was lucky enough to have a husband with a great career and income that enabled us to live on his salary alone. I was foolish enough to think my marriage would last forever. We had a problem but I’m a problem solver and thought we would work at doing just that, solving the problem.
In the end he chose to leave the marriage rather than work on the problem. Under no-fault divorce laws that was his right. But, what rights did my children and I have? None.
And, that is the issue being faced by four out of five people going through a divorce. What is the cost to spouses and children once a divorce is forced upon them?
Children of divorce are:- 3 times more likely to be expelled from school.
- 3 times more likely to conceive a child out of wedlock.
- 5 times more likely to live in poverty
- 14 times more likely to be abused
- 12 times more likely to be incarcerated
Consequences of divorce on women:
- 24% of divorced women live below the poverty line, while only 1 percent of married women are in poverty.
- $112 billion is the annual cost of supporting divorced women and children at the federal and state levels.
Recently Virginia, Michigan, Utah and New Mexico have all introduced some form of "modified no-fault" or "mutual consent" legislation that would keep no-fault divorce laws from applying in situations where there are minor children and one spouse objects to the divorce.
What does this mean? Modified no-fault divorce laws would prevent one spouse from having the unilateral right to break up a family without a good reason. Divorce where there is no good reason would still be granted but there would be repercussions and more than likely fewer men and women would be left behind to clean up the mess left by a spouse who failed to live up to the commitment made to the marriage and family.
That might not sit well with the minority who want a divorce but it would give hope to the majority who don't and, in my opinion when it comes to marriage and the stability of children the majority rules or should rule.
I completely agree with you on this point. Another example of this is the 50/50 child custody and visitation. The legal system pays a lip service to the value of stay-at-home parents. But once you are within the system, you see that they are very much interested in sending them back to work ASAP. All that warm and fuzzy stuff go out the window as soosn as you get down to the business of divorce. The court system penalizes these parents by deducting their potential income from the support and they bend over backwards (at least in this state) to give the other parent 50% visitation (which means no child support). And they do it all claiming that “it is in the best interest of the child.”
I have yet to understand why it is in the best interest of the child to be torn away, for extended periods of time, from the parent who was their primary care giver. They are often left 50% of the time with one parent who has little experience in caring for them and another 50% of the time with a parent who is stuggeling with a sharp decline of income, if not poverty. I actually think that these kids end up paying a very high price.
I am an absolute proponent of children spending quality time with both parents. But I think that the amount of time spent with each parent should be, at least at some level, in proportion to what they had before divorce.
Why? It’s blood simple, you can’t make someone love you…
Divorce is a knife that you use on your kids. A healthly, intact home is better than any divorced home, no matter what the plan or definition of quality time.
I’m in favor of the no fault laws as well as the new trend toward 50/50 custody.
My ex-wife was having an affair, but kept it very quiet. It would have been very difficult to prove it in court. If she was facing financial or custody penalties, she never would have agreed to the divorce.
We share custody of OUR children equally, and it works, even if she’s a w****. At this point, it’s NOMB. The 50/50 custody means that my children have two parents, not a mother and a visitor named dad.
Parents leveraging their kids as a means to maximize their incomes cuts both ways. In my opinion, Mother’s refusing to share parenting to maximize their support is more reprehensible than Father’s asking for more time to reduce child support. If the Fathers don’t actually put in the time, you can always go back to court and get them money, but you can never recover the lost parenting time.
This definately needs to be addressed. Essentially, if one partner wants to behave badly after having made a vow, they can and men in particular can marry the hot chick, dump her when she ages and take on another, while the first wife must struggle to create a new life at an advanced age? What is that about?
I feel mixed on this. I feel that on emotional level you can’t make someone stay if they want an easy out of marriage. On the other hand, speaking from experience thw wife and kids are the ones who pay the price. I worked but it was not enough to make a living especially because my situation was an abrupt mid life crisis. Mental abuse and then abandonment. While we lost our home,cars,withdrew from work and schools due to situation, the way we made it through was receiving help from a church, then selling our furniture so we could eat and then moving in with someone. Now a year later we are just starting over. Lesson learned. Plan ahead, keep a separate account.My ex left with someone that he said “makes good money”
My wife left our marriage for her own father and his money. I tried for months to reconcile… to no avail. We have 3 children. In divorce court I found out her father had given her 98k after the first few months! She now lives in a house and drives a Lexus. Me apt and old minivan. Of course we live in a no fault state. If we had both resided in a fault state… the financial consequences would have been horrific for her and she may have been more open to marriage counseling and reconciliation. All she could talk about was how much she was going to get from me while we were separated. No fault divorce is simply a cash cow for the party who makes the least money – IMHO.
I live in a no-fault state and my soon-to-be ex husband has decide that he wants out. I am currently in school, my daughter just started school, i have a 3 year old son in daycare. Not to mention, we just bought a house in late Feb. The entire time that i have been going to school, he never wanted me to work, just to do the best that i can do in school. Now that he has left us, I am going to have to get two part time jobs just so that i can stay in the house that he is threating to kick me out of. He wants me to lie to the court so that he can be “done with this faster” and if i drag it out, he promises that it will get nasty. The house, the bills, my truck i drive, everything is in his name and i wonder everyday when im gonna get screwed. he wants me out of the house so he can take care of the kids, but he never can make it to see them now as it is. he never cared about his role at home before we seprated so why now? he drinks when hes not at work and he has hit my daughter before and left a hand print on her bottom for 3 days and when he gets mad, she is scared of him. She hides behind me. This no-fault thing sucks. 50/50 custody? im scared to think of what would happen the first time he took them to his hometown. i may never see my kids again. he swears that he is not out to get me but what would you call it when he empties out the bank account beacuse “hes scared your gonna do it first”
Yes, I was an example of a wife who after 15 years of loving an alcoholic got dumped, canned, trashed, whatever you want to call it. My ex earned over 130K salary at Discover Card. Some witch who worked with him thought he was attractive, they made advances toward each other and are married now. When I was suggesting to my then husband that maybe driving home completely blottowed DUI was not such a good idea, he insisted on divorcing me. I just wanted counseling, I just wanted intervention. I needed a father to help me parent my two autistic childen that I had had with him, not anyone else, HIM. He claims that it was because I never earned enough $$$$ that he felt pressured to go out and “network” as he called it with the other Discover Card employees. I had wanted to contest as there was no reason to divorce me, I was caring for the kids, the home, making a part time income and balancing everything else out. Was it perfect? No, marriages never are but I was very much in love with my husband and wanted to make it work with counseling. In oiur state, you cannot force someone to go into counseling with you. But a man can throw you out like a trash heap if he decides he wants to dump you. There is nothing under the law stopping him short of you going forever broke in a contested divorce battle. Because of his excessive drinking I had the courts make note of it. Ironically, when he married this witch he worked with, he got fired since you cannot have 2 individuals in the same fiduciary capacity in the same company like a Discover Financial Services. There is too much danger of collusion. Now he earns about 30K less and that is not a good thing for our kids. THANKS TO NO FAULT DIVORCE, not only is MY life ruined but our children suffer in the wake of his and the new brides’s selfishness. Someone show me the person who thought up no fault divorce and I will personally strangle him/her.