Monday, November 29, 2010
"Who Needs Marriage? Kids Do"
Attorney and commentator Jennifer Braceras has an op-ed in today's Boston Herald responding to Time Magizine's recent cover story entitled "Who Needs Marriage" and a recent Pew Study on the state of marriage and out of wedlock births in the United States. If she is correct in her assessment, as I think she is, what can be done about this crisis and what role can - should - law play?
https://mirrorofjustice.blogs.com/mirrorofjustice/2010/11/who-needs-marriage-kids-do.html
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Michael,
One of my practice areas is divorce law, and I have been and am involved in more than a few cases where one spouse has suddenly decided that they'd rather have "freedom" than have to stay around and deal with life's problems. The only way out of this morass is to reverse several damaging trends that have been ongoing in American for so much time that it would require re-engineering society to pull them off. (I suspect this puts me in the "pessimist" camp.) When you question how law can help, if at all, I can see several ways:
1. Get rid of no-fault divorce nation wide. Even if one state got rid of it, simply traveling to another state to file would dodge it. Alternatively, require that the filing spouse file in the state of the most recent W-2 or drivers' license unless both spouses now reside in another state, and then states could implement no-fault on a wider basis.
2. Increase the availability of fault finding during a divorce, including adultery, and make available an independent action for alienation of spouse, such as in North Carolina.
3. Make divorce much more difficult to obtain, absent direct evidence of abuse, drug use, etc., and make the waiting period for a divorce one year long.
4. Require the parties, if they had a separate religious ceremony, to obtain a certificate from their church giving permission for the divorce.
5. Require any man bearing a child out of wedlock to enlist in the armed forces or public service in order to obtain insurance and support for the child, if he otherwise does not have a job or insurance.
Those are a few thoughts, all but impossible to implement in our society as it stands, and I see little hope for their implementation.