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Revision as of 01:03, 5 April 2005 by Niteowlneils (talk | contribs) (fmt)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)No-fault divorce is the dissolution of a marriage, upon petition to the court by either party, without the requirement of fault on either party. Either party may request, and receive, the dissolution of the marriage, despite the objections of the other party.
Russian history
No-fault divorce was invented by the Bolsheviks following the Russian Revolution of 1917. Before the Revolution, churches, mosques, and synagogues defined family life. It was the ecclesiastical law of the various denominations that controlled the family, marriage, and divorce. For example, the official registration of birth, death, marriage, and divorce was the responsibility of the church parish. Under these non-secular laws, divorce highly restricted. It was essential for Bolsheviks, with their Marxist disdain for religion to replace the ecclesiastical bond with an allegiance to the Communist party and the new Russian government. They destroyed the old bourgeois notions of the family and the home.
The 1918 Decree on Divorce eliminated the religious marriage and the ecclesiastical law, creating civil marriage sanction by the state. Divorce was obtained by filing a mutual consent document with the Russian Registry Office, or by the unilateral request of one party to the court. It was designed to create a strong allegiance and dependence upon the government. In Revolutionary Russia and the Soviet Union, it destroyed the traditional family.
United States history
The so-called "no-fault" divorce was pioneered in the United States by the state of California with the passage of the Family Law Act of 1969, which took effect on January 1, 1970. No-fault divorce allowed either party to dissolve the marriage without the need for "grounds" for dissolution. No-fault divorce is a misleading term. While "fault" is not required, what we have implemented is unilateral divorce. This allows either party to dissolve the marriage despite the objections of the other party.
United States metrics
Over 50% of all first marriages end in divorce. The divorce rates for subsequent marriages are even higher. More than half of all these marriages that end in divorce involve children. Whether these are contested divorces or not, the courts will control the lives of these children until they are emancipated, typically between 18 and 21 years of age. In terms of raw number, there has been an average of about 1 million divorces in the Unites States, each year since 1975.
According to the Americans for Divorce Reform, as the divorce rate soared, so did the number of children involved in divorce. "The number of children involved in divorces and annulments stood at 6.3 per 1,000 children under 18 years of age in 1950, and 7.2 in 1960. By 1970 it had increased to 12.5; by 1975, 16.7; by 1980, the rate stood at 17.3, a 175 percent increase from 1950. Since in 1972, one million American children every year have seen their parents divorce." (Brian Willats, Breaking Up is Easy To Do, available from Michigan Family Forum, citing Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1993.)