Dr. Alan Reifman's Family Policy Course

Today we'll be covering the law of divorce. One of the key issues -- if not the key issue -- is the evolution from the 1960s through the 1980s from a fault-based divorce system to a no-fault one. Some observers argue that we've gone from a system where divorce was too difficult to obtain, to one where it's too easy to obtain. However, attempts to come up with new policies, such as covenant marriage, have not proven very popular.

Family policy students often have interesting ideas for possible new ways to handle divorce. I look forward to hearing them in class or in the online comments!

SOME TUESDAY NIGHT UPDATES ON ISSUES THAT WERE RAISED IN TODAY'S CLASS

Similar to Erin's idea about requiring marital counseling during the divorce waiting period to ensure that the waiting time is actually used to try to repair the relationship, here's a proposal I found on the web.

Another topic of discussion was whether courts could restrict the behavior of parties going through a divorce during any waiting periods that may exist. I found two potentially relevant documents in this area. The first document, from a Wisconsin county's family court, talks about automatic restrictions on conduct such as harassment, and concealing and destroying property. These seem to be consistent with common sense. The second document, from a divorce attorneys' organization, goes over which states have waiting periods to remarry after a divorce (and if so, how long). Relatively few states have remarriage waiting periods.

Lastly, a question came up about whether states that have longer waiting periods have lower divorce rates (perhaps because some couples may reconcile during the waiting period or a waiting period could be a deterrent to divorce). Also as I said in class, lacking a tightly controlled experiment, any correlation (potentially) obtained between states' having long waiting periods and low divorce rates would be open to different possible interpretations. Perhaps waiting periods do affect divorce rates. However, it could be that citizens' highly valuing marriage (which could help keep divorce rates low) could also lead to the legislature passing laws implementing waiting periods (as an aside, I also maintain a blog on correlation and causality). Anyway, the following article (available via the UW-Madison library website) presents a pretty rigorous examination of factors that might lead to divorce.

Sweezy, K. & Tiefenthaler, J. (1996). Do state-level variables affect divorce rates? Review of Social Economy, 44, 47-65.

These authors' conclusion: "Both the state waiting period and the type of state property distribution laws are insignificant in determining the probability of divorce" (p. 63).