PBS News Hour | Why Some Conservative Lawmakers Want to End No-Fault Divorce

Currently, couples in all 50 states who want to end their marriage can file for a so-called “no-fault divorce.”

Neither party has to prove that the other has done anything wrong, such as committing adultery, leaving, or treating the partner cruelly.

But some Republican lawmakers and a handful of Republican states want to get rid of it.

They say it makes divorce too easy and is unfair to men, as it is estimated that 69% of divorces in the United States are filed by women.

Joanna Grossman teaches family law at Southern Methodist University.

The Deadman School of Law.

Joanna, what is the history of no-fault divorces?

Where does it come from and why did it come into existence?

So California was the first state to implement a no-fault divorce system in 1969, after about 200 years of all states using no-fault divorce. That was because California had studied the system and discovered something that most people in the field probably already knew, which was that the system didn’t work.

That fault-based divorces often involved perjury and fabrication, that people fled their jurisdictions to get divorced, and that it did little to distinguish between good and bad marriages.

And what is the result?

What has changed as a result?

When No Fault was first introduced in California.

A revolution of sorts ensued and within 15 years every state had either fully transitioned to a no-fault system or added at least one no-fault property.

We saw some effects early on, including that the divorce system became less problematic.

There were fewer cases of perjury, fabrication, etc.

There were people who came out of marriages that they were stuck in, and then we also saw the real consequences for women, the feminine.

The number of suicides dropped dramatically.

The number of intimate partner homicides among women fell dramatically, and the number of cases of domestic violence also decreased.

These were somewhat unexpected results, but very, very clear consequences of the change.

One of the critics of No Fault Divorce is JD Vance, Trump’s new running mate.

Here’s what he had to say about it in 2021. This video is from Vice News.

I think this is one of the great tricks the sexual revolution played on American pop music.

that’s the idea that, well, okay, these marriages were basically, you know, they may have even been abusive, but they were certainly unhappy, and so by ending them and making it easier for people to change partners, just like they change their underwear, that’s going to make people happier in the long run.

Swap your partner like they’re your underwear.

What do you say to that?

I mean, it’s a pretty weird comparison because most people only have 2 or 3 partners in their lives and hopefully they change their underwear more often.

Um, but I think it really misses the point of a no-fault divorce.

While it made it easier to get divorced, most people still got divorced.

It’s just that they did everything they could to make it happen. And we’ve found that no mistakes fits better with our society’s ideas about marriage.

People actually want to divorce because they consider marriage so important.

And if the marriage does not work out, they want to get out and often start a new marriage.

I think it misses the point.

On the relationship between divorce law and people’s happiness or even the stability of marriage.

What do you think of the argument that men have no right to a fair trial because most divorces are filed by women?

Divorces are thus more often filed by women, ever since the first divorce laws after the revolution. This is largely because marriage is an institution that works less well for women than for men.

The idea of an appeal to due process is rather weak, because it basically boils down to a man having the right to remain married to someone, despite her objections.

Um, there’s no recognized legal support for that sort of thing.

a concept.

I think they get frustrated by the sense that women may have too much autonomy and power and that changing divorce laws might be a way to reduce that, but I think there’s actually very little connection between the two.

Why do you think social conservatives are so focused on this now?

I think part of it is because, on an abstract level, it makes some good points, and suggests that Republicans are committed to traditional conservative values.

They care.

As far as families go, they care about children, and so they can make these kinds of claims about it, even though, as I said, there’s not really much of a relationship.

I also think it’s part of the culture wars that are aimed at making society patriarchal again.

I think most people who are working to abolish the ‘no fault’ principle in this day and age are primarily interested in giving men more say again.

What would be the consequences if we were to abolish this, if we were to withdraw the ‘no fault’ principle?

Who would be affected the most?

I mean, the most obvious effect would be on family courts, which already have a huge backlog and are dealing with a large number of parties who do not have a lawyer.

If there is no fault, a divorce will be faster and cheaper. It also has other consequences.

I think the impact on individuals would be great. Some would be stuck in marriages as they were before the introduction of the ‘no fault’ principle, but most would not be stuck.

They would simply have to pay more or put in more effort to get the divorce they wanted.

So I don’t think it would have a huge impact on the average divorcing couple, other than the cost and expense. It would just further overload the family courts.

The only thing we know historically is that there is no relationship between how difficult it is to get divorced and whether a marriage is happy, so there is no reason to think that making divorce harder would make marriages happier.

Joanna Grossman from SMU, thank you very much.

Don’t mention it.