ekpolk and other lawyers, please explain rationale behind No-Fault Divorce

[javacontour]

Divorce law.

Perhaps you are not an expert, and I want to say that I'm not seeking any legal advice, so don't worry about that.

However, I have to wonder what the rationale behind "No fault" divorce laws is.

It seems a bad deal for folks who are victims of abuse or infidelity. (Yeah, I'm divorced from a cheater!)

While I would not want someone to stay married to someone they didn't love. I don't think a person should be able to be a stay at home mom, then cheat, decides she likes the older, richer guy better, and take the kids and 1/2 the stuff from the guy on whom she cheated.

Seems to me, like other crimes, where losing someting is often deterrent enough for a large part of society. It now seems there is little if any deterrent regarding fidelity, nor consequences for the cheating parties.

In many ways I'm fortunate. In the three years since she left, I'm now out of debt, save a mortgage and my first brand new car for me in 12 years. I'm 30# lighter, my home is cleaner, I got to keep the marital home, etc. No alimony, the marriage was only about 7 years before she left, and the $1k/month I pay in child support for my 7yo daughter is a bargain compared to living with my ex-wife.

But in many ways I'm worse off. I only see my daughter 6 out of every 28 days, there is the stigma of being divorced and the stereotype that if a man is divorced by a woman, he was the one fooling around or beating.

(Besides, are all these cheating men cheating with other men? Nope, they are with some woman, single or married, so the numbers of male and female cheaters is probably pretty even.)

Ok, I got off into full rant mode.

Anyway, personally, I don't see No-Fault divorce as a positive for society. But I'm willing to learn. So if anyone thinks this is a good thing, without crossing the sex/religion/politics boundary, I'm all eyes and ears.

 

[MarkC]

Despite what you may believe, and what feminists will say, there is a huge bias in favor of women in the courts these days. At least there is here.
A woman can pick up the phone, dial 911, say she's being abused, and the police will come and arrest somebody. Then it's not innocent unitl proven guilty, but the other way around.
I can't explain no-fault divorce except that it's a way to further the way of thinking that everybody and every relationship is disposable, and if things don't suit you, leave.
Sorta suks.

 

[pitzel]

quote:

---

However, I have to wonder what the rationale behind "No fault" divorce laws is.

---

Divorce, unfortunately, is one of the most common legal proceedings that occurs in the courts of the world. The courts are already plugged up with litigation concerning what are fairly serious crimes, and tort litigation.

Can you imagine just how large/complex the legal system would be if the law permitted extensive litigation, and allowed the 'blame' to be assigned in the event of a divorce?

I personally am not married, but for the girlfriends I've had over the years, it frightens me how much debt they personally were in, and their propensity to spend money. I strive to maintain a relatively clean personal balance sheet, investing as much money as I can, and not consuming frivilously. And quite frankly, the girl population out there, once you eliminate the ones with substantial credit card debt, the pickings are pretty slim.

 

[Schmoe]

Diovorce, that 7 letter word that basically means #ell. I totally agree, what automatically makes a woman a better parent just because she gave birth to the child? I know a lot of my friends are WAY better parents than the childs mother, but yet, they get all the benefits. What's really scary, is that there are websites out there that women frequent and tells them exactly how to get a divorce, make the guy pay and then get all his retirement. I personally agree in pre-numpts. Worth their weight in gold. However said money can't buy hapiness did not live in this century. I think there should be a law that states that if the women get's lazy, quits working, won't help out with the chores, cuts off $ex, gains 100 plus pounds, then that should be the grounds for a no fault divorce and the guy gets it all. Period.

 

[wantin150]

I think it just makes it easier for people to split. It may save the burden of actually having to go through that long drawn out court battle to prove the _______ (insert reason here).

Here, a man would almost have to prove child abuse on behalf of the mother in order for him to get custody of a child. Our Family Court will almost always side with the mother in a custody dispute.

I'm sorry you went through what you went through. You seem to be a better person because of it and are doing the right thing for your child, and that gets my respect. Too many deadbeat dads. As to a stigma, yeah, they exist but I would rather someone get out of a bad relationship than stay in it and have their children grow up in that environment.

FWIW, CDV laws are obviously there for a reason but they are VERY strict and leave little room for interpretation. It's a little more indepth than what MarkC stated but the idea is the same. It doesn't take much to ruin a reputation, falsely.

 

[Dan4510]

www.nomarriage.com

www.americanwomensuck.com

two informative sites on this matter.


Dan

 

[Win]

I think you are confusing grounds for divorce and disposition of property acquired during the marriage.

In AR one has to prove grounds for divorce, i.e. that one party commited an act or acts that the legislature deems sufficient to dissolve a marriage. The only no fault ground is separation without cohabitation for a specified period of time.

Each party is to retain his or her property he or she had before the marriage. Marital property, which is property acquired during the marriage subject to certain statutory exceptions, is to be equally divided between the parties. There are provisions for dividing marital property unequally, but it is a cumbersome process that requires some specific findings as to why it is being done, and I have never seen it happen.

One of the more outrageous dispositions I have seen was an equal division of a private disability payment. Because you cannot divide a disabling injury, one party got to suffer all of the injury but received only one-half of the compensation for it.

Why did the state legislature make this disposition scheme? I don't know, I'm guessing they felt that the reasons for marriage dissolution are often pretty complex and involve a lot of fault on both sides, and decided this was the fairest and simplest way to be done with it.

Child custody is determined by what is in the best interests of the child. I have many male clients that have obtained custody of their children, even when the children are at very young ages.

 

[javacontour]

Win,

I know they are seperate.

My beef is, if someone is "at fault" then why should they benefit from the labor of the union.

If you don't find fault to begin with, and while I agree that no-one is perfect, I didn't force, or even ask my ex-wife to go out and have an affair.

Actually, I asked her what was wrong, and got the answer "Nothing" right up to the day she walked out.

Thanks for the clarification, but I don't have them confused.

I understand that there are essentially up-to three actions:

The dissolution of the marriage.
The division of marital assets.
The custody of any children from the marriage.

However, I assert that by taking out fault provisions, and language that disallows infidelity from playing any role in deciding the division of assets and custody issues, many people are short-changed when it comes to divorce.

I think someone said it best, we look to courts for fairness and justice, but the courts are just looking to get you off the docket.

The way I see it, if someone wants to leave the marriage, then let them go. But the children and the assets remain with the party who was willing to work it out, and kept his vows.

I shouldn't have to pay 10's of thousands of dollars for a divorce I didn't want, and to fight to see my daughter.

I was all for a 50/50 split of everything, assets, debt, parenting time, joint custody.

If we are going to have no-fault divorce, then let's catch up these other issues, where it is an equitable distribution of assets, liabilities and responsibilities from the get-go, and a party has to prove they deserve more money, or more parenting time than the other.

Personally, I vote for doing away with no-fault and laws that indicate that infidelity is automatic grounds for losing primary custodian role for a child. Cheating sets a bad example!

 

[Win]

quote:

---

Originally posted by javacontour:

I think someone said it best, we look to courts for fairness and justice, but the courts are just looking to get you off the docket.

---

I don't know about IL, but in AR, the legislature wrote the marital property disposition statute - the Court simply implements it. Here, any complaints in this regard should be leveled at the elected lawmakers - not the Court.

Adultery would certainly be a factor to be considered in a child custody case, but it would likely not be dispositive. Child custody is always decided on what is in the best interest of the child - custody of a child is not a reward to one parent or a punishment to the other.

 

[javacontour]

Unfortunately, it seem gender and presidence (SIC?) have more weight in custody decisions than do issues of fidelity.

In IL, adultery is NOT an issue for property distribution nor for child custody.

If custody is not to be punishment, then why are children taken away from faithful, competent dads?

Somebody gets punished. Why should it be the faithful dad?

 

[Benzadmiral]

It's part of the Feminist Agenda (tm) to destroy the traditional family.

-- Paul W.

 

[Win]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Benzadmiral:
It's part of the Feminist Agenda (tm) to destroy the traditional family.

-- Paul W.

---

I'm sure the feminists are up to absolutely no good, but I think it more likely that a high cost of living and punitive taxation have done more to destroy the traditional family.

 

[javacontour]

Not to mention that most lawmakers and lawyers are men.

So it's hard to blame women for the current state of affairs, pardon the pun.

 

[buster]

I just went throuh a no-fault divorce and it's the best thing I could have done. I believe it's called uncontested here. My ex-wife and I got married young (23 yrs old) and just didn't get along at all. We never saw eye to eye on anything. We both agreed that we shouldn't stay married and not be happy. For $700 I walked away from it being we both were on good terms. Why stay in a unhappy/unhealthy marriage? Things are going extremely well now.

 

[javacontour]

I think that's a great option if you don't have children, don't have infidelity or a significant number of assets.

I have not said I was totally against divorce. I can't get into my religious beliefs regarding divorce without violating the spirit of the rules here.

What I'm against is for faithful dads (and moms) losing access to their children and/or laws that do not consider spousal abuse or infidelity when it comes to custody and property distribution decisions.

And while I'm at it, while I don't pay alimony, adultery should be automatic disqualification for the reciept of spousal support.

 

[ekpolk]

Java:

I'm sorry to hear about your mess, though it does sound like in the end, you're better off (easy for me to say, of course).

This is the one area of law I promised myself never to get into -- just waaaaaaay too ugly all around.

There are a lot of "policy reasons" why some states have gone "no-fault". The underlying theme seems to be a broad decision that it's just better to spare everyone a fight as the conclusion of what's probably already been a fight for some time. A civil trial (now there's a bad pun in this context) is primarily a fact-finding exercise. The legislatures are, in effect, saying, "we know they're done, why make them prove the obvious." Now, you'll also see "counterbalances" in various forms to try to make it a little difficult still so that folks aren't running off for a divorce because of today's fight over breakfast.

I don't mean to short change it, but as you can imagine, whole articles and books get written on the the intricate details of the various forms no-fault takes. As with all trade-offs, it offers some good and some bad, often in very different proportions for individual "players." For society as a whole, how the balance comes out is a tough call.

 

[buster]

My girlfriend is a lawyer and she said that back when only purely fault systems for divorce existed, many problems arose that eventually led to states adopting no-fault statutes. As one example, if BOTH parties say cheated on one another, their would be no ground to get a divorce. Couples were stuck in a miserable marriage. If both sides committed a fault, most of the time courts would not grant a divorce. Almost every state has no-fault grounds now for reasons such as this, among many others. Just because it is easier to get divorced now, doesn't mean it's unhealthy. There are more divorces, in her opinion, not because of some mass dissolution of the traditional family, but rather because people now actually have an option to get out of their marriage without having to neatly fit into an enumerated fault ground to be granted the divorce. Was it better years ago that abusive couples had to remain married and subject kids to that? I don't think so.

 

[javacontour]

Are you sure you are not running for office

Like I said, financially, I'm better off. Being there as a dad for my daughter, I'm far worse off.

I'm sure you've seen plenty of this in the military. As a former platoon leader and Company XO, I've given my fair share of "orders" to soldiers who were fooling around on their spouses back home, and fired a couple of NCO's for the same antics.

It's just ugly, and I often get fed up with our society for not wanting to do anything about it.

Just because something is easy or expedient, doesn't mean it's right.

I mean, I could have easily shot the other man, but that wouldn't be right

 

[javacontour]

quote:

---

Originally posted by buster:
My girlfriend is a lawyer and she said that back when only purely fault systems for divorce existed, many problems arose that eventually led to states adopting no-fault statutes. As one example, if BOTH parties say cheated on one another, their would be no ground to get a divorce. Couples were stuck in a miserable marriage. If both sides committed a fault, most of the time courts would not grant a divorce. Almost every state has no-fault grounds now for reasons such as this, among many others. Just because it is easier to get divorced now, doesn't mean it's unhealthy. There are more divorces, in her opinion, not because of some mass dissolution of the traditional family, but rather because people now actually have an option to get out of their marriage without having to neatly fit into an enumerated fault ground to be granted the divorce. Was it better years ago that abusive couples had to remain married and subject kids to that? I don't think so.

---

So make someone prove abuse and then not let them around the kids if they are so dangerous.

But there are millions of men in the US who are NOT abusive, who are not granted custody of their children every year, simply because of the whim of their spouse.

If you want to argue for no-fault, then at least argue for a fair no-fault.

 

[buster]

Java: actually in many states adultery is a grounds for not granting alimony. It depends on your state legislatures laws. Also, the highest rate of divorce just so happens to be in the bible belt, it's a statistical fact.
As Win said, the best interests of the child are what governs in a custody decisions. The primary caretaker, whether that person was the stay at home parent or the working parent, usually is granted custody so as to not disrupt the child, i.e. to keep with the best interests of the child.