Strevel’s story and others like it are fueling a growing movement to end or reform no-fault divorce law. In the war over ““family values,’’ this may be the next battlefield. Alarmed over the one in four kids now living in single-parent homes, legislators are assailing a basic tenet of modern divorce law: that keeping people in unhappy marriages harms children and adults alike. This week, possibly on Valentine’s Day, Michigan state Rep. Jessie Dalman expects to introduce a set of bills ending no-fault for contested cases involving children and pushing couples to undergo counseling before getting married. Similar legislation is up for debate in Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Virginia. Though none of the bills are yet near passage, the issue has caught fire among feminists, religious groups, men’s advocates, lawyers and the Americans whose first marriages – up to half – are projected to end in divorce.
It is a neat irony that the battle is spearheaded by conservatives calling for less freedom in people’s private lives. But support goes beyond just Republicans and religious groups. A recent poll conducted by the Family Research Council found that 55 percent of Americans favor making it harder to leave a marriage when one partner wants to stay together. As William Galston, a former domestic-policy adviser to President Clinton, observes, ““We have had a great social experiment for the last 40 years, shifting in the direction of autonomy, choice, personal happiness and fulfillment, and away from responsibility and sacrifice. We are now asking ourselves whether the experiment was a success or failure. There has been a huge sea change [against no-fault] in the last six months.’’ In her best seller, ““It Takes a Village,’’ Hillary Rodham Clinton concedes that she is ““ambivalent about no-fault divorce with no waiting period when children are involved.’’ Her husband, at his national prayer breakfast Feb. 1, suggested that ““It may be that it ought to be a little harder to get a divorce where children are involved.’’ Though marital law is reserved to the states, this is a rich issue for the Clintons; unlike Bob Dole, Newt Gingrich and Phil Gramm, for example, they’ve kept their first marriage together.
The no-fault revolution began in 1969, in response to a decade of rising divorce rates. Ronald Reagan, then governor of California – and himself divorced – signed the first major no-fault bill. Up until then, spouses had to prove that the other had done wrong, which usually meant adultery, abuse or abandonment. Couples desperate to get away from each other lied in court or hired private detectives to spy on one another. Reagan’s no-fault bill was designed to reduce the acrimony and shenanigans. It allowed partners who both wanted out to split amicably; even if one contested the divorce, the other could get it without asserting wrongdoing. Within about a decade, every state except New York followed California’s lead.
The results, critics are now saying, have been disastrous. A recent University of Oklahoma study found that in the three years after no-fault, divorce rates in 44 of 50 states jumped. Much attention has been paid to the pathologies associated with unwed motherhood, but nearly twice as many kids are living in single-parent homes because of divorce. ““We’ve created a whole class of people in poverty – divorced women with children,’’ says Georgia state Rep. Brian Joyce, who is proposing a bill to ban no-fault for couples with children when one partner doesn’t want a divorce.
Immediately after divorce, according to sociologist Judith Seltzer of the University of Wisconsin, the income of households with kids declines by 21 percent per capita. According to a 1994 census report, 38 percent of divorced or separated women with kids live in poverty; the figure is 17 percent for men who get custody. No-fault has reduced the leverage of custodial parents – usually women – in trying to get better financial settlements. Opponents of no-fault also point to evidence that children of divorce are more likely to drop out of school, have children out of wedlock and have poor mental health.
The problem is that these numbers may not really reflect the impact of no-fault. Sociologist Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins argues, ““Most evidence suggests that no-fault had little effect on divorce rates. The rates were going up anyway.’’ Eliminating no-fault now, he contends, wouldn’t greatly lower the divorce rate. ““The great misconception is that divorce laws change people’s behavior. People’s behavior changes divorce laws.’’ The economics also merit a second look. Brooklyn Law School professor Marsha Garrison compared divorce settlements in New York, where there is no unilateral no-fault law, with those in the rest of the country, and found women in New York got no higher alimony or share of the marital assets.
In addition, the arguments against no-fault don’t take account of the impact of bad marriages or messy divorce proceedings on kids. As Cherlin notes, ““Some of the supposed effects of divorce on children are visible before the parents separate.’’ Sara McLanahan of Princeton contends that a large part of the psychological problems shown by the children of divorce stems from ““predivorce conflicts. For high-conflict parents, it looks like divorce may not make things worse. It may be a wash.’’ Ending no-fault would likely keep kids in high-conflict homes longer and make divorce suits more adversarial. Advo-cates for battered women claim it would also make it harder for women to leave abusive or violent relationships – especially if they feared reprisals for testifying to abuse in court.
In the absence of legal reform, some judges are already acting on their own, slowing down the divorce process. One judge in Cleveland, for example, granted a couple’s request for a divorce but ordered the parents to stay together until their kids were grown. The current crackdown on deadbeat dads also helps, in two ways: it brings money to divorced moms and their kids, and makes fathers less likely to walk if they know they’ll have to pay.
The best hope may lie in making it harder for people to get married, not divorced. Following the lead of Christian columnist Michael J. McManus, the clergy in 37 cities have adopted ““community marriage policies’’ to make couples go through counseling in conflict resolution before marriage, as well as rigorous grilling about their relationship. About 10 percent of these couples decide against marriage, McManus admits, but those who do marry are more likely to stay wed. In the current political market for family values, however, a call to keep young people out of wedlock is one family value that’s hard to sell.
Next week, a divorce-reform bill will be introduced in the Michigan Legislature. Among its provisions:
After California passed the first no-fault law in 1969, the number of divorces continued to climb nationwide for another 10 years, leveling off in 1981.
