U.S. Example shows no-fault leads to Divorce-Military-Industrial Complex,
which admits it sold you an unworkable system only when it thinks it's too
late to do anything about it except keep paying them to service it
Although resident in the U.S, I have some knowledge of what is
happening in the U.K. I think there is a very great danger that the U.K.
will follow the U.S. precedent -- ironically just at the point at which
the serious problems of this precedent are emerging very clearly in the
U.S.
Anyone thinking about divorce law reform in the U.K. should heed the
lessons in the U.S. As I see it, these lessons are as follows:
(1) No-fault divorce in the U.S. was presented as a way of enabling
couples whose marriages had already broken down to divorce with dignity
and without hostility. This is a myth. In the U.S., the evidence is that
the great upsurge of divorces followed no-fault. It was NOT simply a
matter of enabling people whose marriages were already beyond hope to
split up in some rational and dignified way. There has been no
diminution in the hostility associated with divorce. If anything, this
hostility has increased, as evidenced by the use of tactics like false
allegations of sexual molestation in U.S. divorces. No-fault divorce in
the U.K. will undoubtedly lead to a great upsurge in the number of
divorces, just as it has done in the U.S. There is a perfectly common
sense basis for this -- if you make something easier to do, more people
will do it. Assuredly, no-fault will NOT diminish hostility in divorce,
since this is an inevitable corollary of family breakups.
(2) U.S. experience indicates that, if you make divorce easier, a
substantial industry springs up around the greater number of divorces.
Some people in the U.S. call this a "cottage industry," but it
is very far
from being that. It is far more akin to the military-industrial complex,
and provides BILLIONS of dollars a year to its participants. The divorce
industry consists not only of divorce lawyers, but of divorce mediators,
psychologists,
social workers, authors of books about how to cope with divorce, etc. etc.
Once you create a whole industry that depends on a high rate of family
breakups, you create a lobbying group. They tell legislators and the
media that divorce isn't so bad, that it's good for children in most
situations, and so on. By the time people find out that this message is
a
bunch of self-serving baloney, it may be too late to do anything about it.
The best tactic in the U.K., in my view, is to make sure that those
who are in the front lines of social problems make their views felt.
Teachers, police officers, judges, and similar people know the results of
the breakdown of the family. Let them tell the government. Let them
remind the government of what has happened in the U.S.
Also, point out some of the respect for law and respect for contracts
issues. Why, for example, should revisions of U.K. divorce law apply to
marriages entered into under the old rules? Why should people enter into
marriage contracts never knowing what the rules will be, when this doesn't
apply to business contracts? Why shouldn't people be able to make their
own contracts for their own marriages, not subject to ex post facto
changes by legislators?
If anyone in the U.K. wants to see the consequences of family
breakdown and of making it easier to divorce, they don't need to
speculate. Just look at the U.S. There is a very clear connection in the
U.S. between all kinds of social problems, such as crime, falling
educational standards, teenage pregnancy, and drug and alcohol abuse, and
fatherless families.
I am not a lawyer, but I understand that there is a legal principle
called "cui bono" -- a Latin expression meaning "who benefits?"
Above
all, this applies to proposals for change to family law. When you see
newspaper editorials on the subject, and hear political speeches, ask
yourself, how would the interests of the originator be affected by the
proposed changes? No one takes seriously the views of the tobacco
industry about lung cancer. No one should take seriously the views of the
divorce industry about the effects of divorce.
Kenneth H. Skill
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