Saturday, July 04, 2009

Commentary: Let's end disposable marriage

By Leah Ward Sears

ATLANTA, Georgia (CNN) -- After Tommy's sudden death, we found among my brother's personal effects a questionnaire he had completed in 2005 for a church class.
The very first question was a fill-in-the-blank that went like this: "At the end of my life, I'd love to be able to look back and know I'd done something about ....."
"Fathers," Tommy wrote.
When asked to identify something that angered him that could be changed, Tommy wrote, "Re-establishment of equity and balance and sanity within the American family."

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/07/02/sears.family.divorce/index.html?iref=hpmostpop

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't understand the judge's position in that article. She says no-fault divorce is very damaging to people's lives but also that we should not return to fault-based divorce. What other system could you possibly have if you reject both fault and no-fault? Either fault is or is not important in deciding whether a divorce is warranted. Also, I don't understand how fault based divorce traps a person in abusive marriages. Shouldn't such a person be able to demonstrate fault and thereby get the divorce? And as for fault based divorce being ugly--isn't that inevitable when you are required to prove why you should be allowed to break up your family? In a society that values marriage, those reasons had better be ugly to justify a serious remedy like divorce. The judge sounds very confused on this issue.

Jennifer Roback Morse said...

Dear anon,
I was wondering that very thing myself. What exactly is her position? My own position would be that we should move, state by state, in the direction of more accountability in divorce. This obviously includes a provision for taking account of fault, at least in property settlement and custody issues.