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Revision as of 17:00, 13 May 2005 by Longhair (talk | contribs) (Added Category, Family law, Divorce)(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 that the petitioner show fault on the part of the other 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 was 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 sought to eliminate the old bourgeois notions of the family and the home.
The 1918 Decree on Divorce eliminated the religious marriage and the underlying ecclesiastical law, by replacing them with civil marriage sanctioned 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. This new institution was designed to create a strong sense of allegiance to and an actual dependence upon the government.
United States history
"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. The term "no-fault" is misleading. The laws have implemented unilateral divorce, allowing 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.
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