Divorce is so prevalent these days, it seems everyone I’ve met this past year has been involved in one. Many of those that have wrestled this topic are active Christians, which implies they value marriage. I wanted to know why they failed, how are they justified, and could they have been prevented …but these topics seem too sensitive to breach with most divorcees. Rather I did a little thinking on my own, mixed with a little reading. Most of it is still tumbling about my noggin’, but I thought I’d share what I learned about the history of divorce…
Until recently issues like birth, death, welfare and marriage were all within the church’s domain. Within the past century or so authority of these issues has passed to the state. The church was reluctant to issue divorces. The state took a similar stance, denying divorces unless one spouse had significantly violated the marriage agreement. Couples determined to separate would do so by any means nessesary, which often meant perjury …or worse!
It was perjury that prompted governments to provide a straight-forward means to end a marriage without all the deceit, petty charges and arsenic. In 1970 the “no-fault divorce” law was passed. The gist of a “no-fault” divorce is that either spouse can terminate the marriage at anytime. No one needs to violate the marriage agreement and protests from the other party will not stop the proceedings.
The terms for a “no-fault” divorce differ from state-to-state. Surprisingly, New York is among the strictest states, requiring both spouses to sign a separation agreement and remain separated for a year before the proceedings can start. Could this be the reason New York has one of the lowest divorce rates in the country, significantly lower than every state in the Bible Belt? A small group began to lobby for a legal alternative that would allow couples to choose to deny themselves no-fault divorces. This new kind of marriage agreement is called a covenant marriage. The idea being that marriage would once again be a significant agreement by which a significant violation is required in order to terminate it. The most common violations are abuse, felony, adultery, abandonment, and long periods of separation. (As for the difference between abandonment and long-term separation, it is lost on me.)