The Joys of No-Fault Divorce

This month's Atlantic Monthly has a blurb on the up-side of no-fault divorce. A recent study examined the impact of divorce law on family violence since 1969, and found that states permitting unilateral, "no-fault" divorce saw female suicide rates decline by around 20 percent over a twenty-year period (male suicide rates remained constant). It also found a correlation with large declines in domestic violence: male-on-female abuse dropped by 36 percent over ten years, female-on-male abuse dropped by 24 percent, and the number of women murdered by their husbands dropped by around ten percent. The authors argue not that people are using no-fault divorce to escape abusive marriages, but that the presence of an easier path to divorce has changed the bargaining landscape---that when people can leave abusive partners, spouses may be less likely to be abusive.

Having been in an abusive marriage, I don't necessarily agree with the authors; I'm inclined to think abusers don't change their behavior (and I'm sure there are studies out there that demonstrate patterns of serial abuse). At the same time, when I read these statistics, I couldn't help but smile at the obviousness of it! My no-fault divorce occurred in 1993, the result of just not being able to take it anymore. I grew up, like many people, believing that divorce was wrong, divorce was a cop-out, divorce was the result of not-working-hard-enough, divorce meant failure. Like the proverbial frog in boiling water, I lived through behavior that escalated finally into a murder attempt after I filed for divorce. Personally, I credit the "no-fault" divorce as the reason why another attempt to kill me didn't happen....he was given an "out" too....abuse did not show up on the divorce decree, and he considered that a plus. For myself, I felt that I'd'a had a helluva time trying to "prove" abuse, since I had not been severely injured (the stereotype of the abused female as always having been beaten to within an inch of her life....as if the rest of us are supposed to tolerate occasional slaps, punches and kicks...roll with the punches literally, at it were). Even if he had never escalated into physical abuse, I still felt I had a fundamental human right not to be married--legally tied--to an alcoholic who refused to work and spewed an incessant barrage of verbal abuse and insults during the moments when he wasn't asleep! Because of my conditioning, I put up with it. I put up with it until I realized it was killing me. No-fault divorce literally saved my life.

Yet, practically all the culture-war conservatives demonize no-fault divorce as one of the watershed causes of the "destruction of the family", preferring not to recognize that some "families" are already destroyed. A marriage certificate does not make or necessarily reflect an intact family. In reality, the divorce rates in the U.S. have been climbing since after the Civil War, more so during the twentieth century, until peaking in the late 1970's....as this article, which also cites the above study, shows. Much literature on divorce shows a statistical jump in the late 1970s during the advent of no-fault, with the numbers dropping off after the "pent-up need" fell off.

I'm skeptical about conservative froth over divorce. After all, it's hardly anything new. Philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote on the increase of divorce back in the 1920's, attributing it to the rise in education and opportunities for women, and to the natural human tendency to look at "the grass being greener" in a heterogeneous society. The Atlantic Monthly offers an article entitled, "Are Americans Polygamous?", which decried the 600 percent increase in divorce and declared marriage a "monumental failure". The year of the article? 1947. Meanwhile, we're still treated to periodic lamentations on divorce and how it's supposedly destroying society. My grandmothers say the same arguments were bandied about in their day. Life goes on. Divorce isn't pleasant, but it's a damn sight better than a miserable marriage. Those who advocate making divorce more difficult are either unaware of what the conseqences will be, or just don't give a damn, because they have resources that will protect them from having to suffer those consequences, should the need arise in their lives.