Statistics on divorce before the no-fault revolution

From The Divorce Racket by Stanley Rosenblatt, Esquire

(Part of the Divorce Reform Page)

In 1969, Miami lawyer Stanley Rosenblatt's The Divorce Racket called for a "revolution" that would eliminate fault grounds of divorce and give everyone a right to unilateral divorce after a cooling-off period of 60 days or so. Rosenblatt cited several statistics that are useful in today's no-fault debate, in which we are arguing about the effects of restricting no-fault without really having any comparable real-world examples of the more restrictive systems that are being proposed. (In subjecting ourselves to the experiment of universal, unilateral no-fault divorce, we neglected to leave a "control group" unrevolutionized.) Some of Rosenblatt's statistics about a time just before no-fault was introduced:

One-fourth of marriages ended in divorce (p. 9).
Of these divorces, 85% to 90% were not contested! (p. 11).
"Extremely few lawyers" specialized in divorce. (p. 128)
The average man [spent] more time deciding upon a car purchase than in choosing a lifelong spouse, and the average woman often [knew] more about her hairdresser than about her intended." (p. 151).
Most common grounds of divorce (pp. 8-9):

1. Cruelty 40%
2. Desertion 33%
3. Adultery
4. Alcoholism
5. Felony conviction
6. Nonsupport
7. Impotence

Rosenblatt thought his reforms would greatly reduce the role of lawyers and judges and drastically reduce employment opportunities for them, because the only issues left would be custody, property and support, simple issues which lawyers and judges had no particular expertise in. He also thought his proposal would be an "emancipation proclamation" for men, who were economically oppressed and "victimized" by "the little woman." He did not provide footnotes.

--John Crouch. Copyright John Crouch 1997. May be reproduced with this notice.

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Originally posted and maintained by Americans for Divorce Reform; now maintained by John Crouch. You can call me at (703) 528-6700 or e-mail me through my law office's web site.