Before the 1960s, it was really hard to get divorced in America.
Typically, the only way to do it was to convince a judge that your spouse had committed some form of wrongdoing, like adultery, abandonment, or “cruelty” (that is, abuse). This could be difficult: “Even if you could prove you had been hit, that didn’t necessarily mean it rose to the level of cruelty that justified a divorce,” said
Marcia Zug, a family law professor at the University of South Carolina.
Then came a revolution: In 1969, then-Gov. Ronald Reagan of California (who was himself divorced) signed
the nation’s first no-fault divorce law, allowing people to end their marriages without proving they’d been wronged. The move was a recognition that “people were going to get out of marriages,” Zug said, and gave them a way to do that without
resorting to subterfuge. Similar laws soon swept the country, and rates of
domestic violence and spousal murder began to drop as people — especially women — gained more freedom to leave dangerous situations.
Today, however, a counter-revolution is brewing:
Conservative commentators and
lawmakers are calling for an end to no-fault divorce, arguing that it has harmed men and even destroyed the fabric of society. Oklahoma state Sen. Dusty Deevers, for example,
introduced a bill in January to ban his state’s version of no-fault divorce. The Texas Republican Party added a call to end the practice to its
2022 platform (the plank is preserved in
the 2024 version). Federal lawmakers like Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and
House Speaker Mike Johnson, as well as former Housing and Urban Development Secretary
Ben Carson, have spoken out in favor of tightening divorce laws.
If this sounds outlandish or like easily dismissed political posturing — surely Republicans don’t want to turn back the clock on marital law more than 50 years — it’s worth looking back at, say, how rhetorical attacks on abortion, birth control, and IVF have become reality.
And that will cause huge problems, especially for anyone experiencing abuse. “Any barrier to divorce is a really big challenge for survivors,” said
Marium Durrani, vice president of policy at the National Domestic Violence Hotline. “What it really ends up doing is prolonging their forced entanglement with an abusive partner.”
In the wake of
the Dobbs decision, divorce is just one of many areas of family law that conservative policymakers see an opportunity to rewrite. “We’ve now gotten to the point where things that weren’t on the table are on the table,” Zug said. “Fringe ideas are becoming much more mainstream.”
It’s worth noting that though the no-fault laws initially led to spikes in divorce, rates then began to drop, and reached a 50-year low in 2019.
No-fault divorce can be easier on children, who don’t have to experience their parents facing each other in a trial,
experts say. Research suggests that allowing such divorces increased women’s power in marriages and even
reduced women’s suicide rates. A return to the old ways would turn back the clock on this progress, scholars say.
“We know exactly what happens when people can’t get out of very unhappy marriages,” Zug said. “There’s much higher incidences of domestic abuse and spousal murder.”
Divorce is extremely common — more than 670,000 American couples split
in 2022 alone. Any rollback to no-fault divorce would likely be politically unpopular, even in red states (some of which have
higher divorce rates than the national average).
But perhaps emboldened by their victory in overturning
Roe v. Wade, social conservatives have gone after other popular targets in recent months, from
birth control to
IVF. The drive to increase restrictions on divorce is part of the same movement, Zug said — an effort to re-entrench “conservative family values,” incentivize
heterosexual marriage and
childbearing, and disempower women. “They are all connected,” Zug said.
