Favorite Quotes on Divorce Reform

"This bill is designed to put the guardrails back up. ... The guardrails were taken down in 1970 and a lot of marriages that would have stayed on the road and maybe bounced off the guardrails have instead gone over the cliff. ... There will still be marriages that bust right through the guardrails because the're just completely out of whack. But marriages that can be saved should be saved, and that's what the bill is designed to do."
Iowa State Rep. Charles Hurley, quoted in an article in the Cedar Rapids Gazette ("Honeymoon over for no-fault divorce law?", by Rod Boshart, Feb. 18, 1996)

Congressman Tim Penny:
"As for Mr. Penny, in referring to his vote on behalf of no-fault divorce as a freshman Minnesota state senator in the mid-1970s, he now writes:
"I did not expect divorce rates would rise so dramatically. I did not foresee the approximately one million American children now affected annually by divorce, twice the number of 30 years ago. . . . I now know these things. Consequently, I have concluded that we must replace the legal standard of "no-fault" with the higher standard of 'hold harmless.'* 'No-fault' divorce has too often harmed children. This must change."
--Congressman Tim Penny, quoted in the summer 1996 newsletter of the Center of the American Experiment
*Editor's note: "hold harmless" is a legal term meaning that the person who breaks a contract must be liable for any harm to the other party and leave her as well off as she was before. Under this type of rule, you would still be able to get a unilateral divorce if you could afford to compensate the other party -- and any affected third parties -- fully. -- JC

"It may be that it ought to be a little harder to get a divorce where children are involved".
-- President Bill Clinton, speaking at a National Prayer Breakfast Feb. 1, 1996, quoted in a British House of Commons debate by John Patten, M.P. on April 24, 1996.

"Only acts of war and the events of natural disasters are more harmful to a child's psyche than the divorce process."
"No two people become divorced at the same time."
--The Newsletter of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, Summer 1997

"Let's be blunt: If you hire a divorce lawyer today, there is a good chance you will hire a bankruptcy lawyer within two or three years."
-- From an article titled "After the Split" in the August 16, 1998 edition of The Kansas City Star MoneyWise section, written by staffer Gene Meyer, quoted by Diane Sollee on the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education,LLC (CMFCE) listserv

"Where you have minor children, there's really no such thing as no-fault divorce for fathers," says Detroit attorney Philip Holman, vice-president of the National Congress for Fathers and Children. "On the practical level, fathers realize that divorce means they lose their kids."
--"The faults of ending no-fault divorce" By Cathy Young / The Detroit News 3/19/96

If economics were the simple driver of the success of marriage and driving healthy marriages, then Hollywood would be filled with lots of healthy, stable marriages.
-- Wade Horn, Asst. Sec. of US Dept. of HHS, On NPR's "Talk of the Nation" January 22, 2004

70 % of divorces end "low-conflict" marriages
Wallerstein and others who stress the high cost of divorce raise hackles
among those committed to the view that children are better off when a
bad marriage ends. But a new study of family upheaval by sociologists
Paul Amato of the University of Nebraska and Alan Booth of Pennsylvania
State University underlines some important distinctions. According to
their research, reported in their 1997 book A Generation at Risk, the
worst situations for children are high-conflict marriages that last and
low-conflict marriages that end in divorce. And it turns out that most
divorces fall into the latter category: A whopping 70 percent of
divorces end "low-conflict" marriages. "For children's sake," Amato and
Booth conclude, "some marriages should not be salvaged. But in marriages
that are not fraught with severe conflict and abuse, future generations
would be well served if parents remained together until children are grown."
From "The Anti-Divorce Revolution" in the Weekly Standanrd, Dec. 1997, http://www.smartmarriages.com/weeklystandard.html

Barbara Dafoe Whitehead
Ms. Whitehead, who is not divorced, spoke openly of family life in the
United States. She noted that 20 years ago Americans began acting as if
they had changed their minds about the foundation of family life. "We
decided in the 1970s, out of a sense of optimism about the future, that
we were going to reengineer family relationships in a way that made them
more productive of our own individual satisfactions, and that it was
okay to give up on an unhappy marriage and move on. That was a big
change in thinking. And the second part was that children would bounce
back. That was such a pervasive idea in the literature [of] the 1970s.
Well, who would refuse a deal like that? And then, sadder but wiser, we
now stand in the 1990s-and we realize that that optimistic scenario
hasn't been played out" (Ladies' Home Journal, March, 1995, p. 73).
--From an article summarizing Peggy Noonan's interview with Mrs. Whitehead

"In extending serial monogamy to everyone as part of the unlimited riches available to middle-class Americans after 'the War,' did we underestimate the price of 'temporary' marriage? Did we overlook the economic and psychosocial effects of essentially encouraging people to end an intimate and supposedly lifetime relationship simply because they got bored?"
--Ira Lurvey, Chair, American Bar Association Family Law Section (Quoting him here does not imply that he favors restricting no-fault. He does not. I believe he does not object to Covenant Marriage, however.).

"It is incomparably better that individuals should suffer than that an institution, which is the basis of all human good, should be shaken or endangered."
--Timothy Dwight, quoted by Florence King

"These no-responsibility divorces have been great for guys. And women are just dumped."
--Tina Brown, editor of the New Yorker, Vanity Fair and Talk.

On May 27, 1996, The Los Angeles Times ran a front-page story on current efforts to reform "no fault" divorce laws. According to The Times, in approximately 20 states, "it is easier to break the marriage contract than it is to fire an employee or back out of buying a car."
--From The Calvary Chapel Library

"My mother ... woke up this morning to find the word D-I-V-O-R-C-E written in mirror writing on her forehead with a big black felt pen. Of course she didn't know the word was there ... until she stepped into the bathroom to brush her teeth and looked in the mirror ...
"Well, I think to myself, fatherless again. ... And once again ... I feel like the front doors to my house have been opened and the parents have announced to the children inside, Whoops! Sorry, but we just lost you in a poker game. We're afraid you'll have to be clearing out now."
--Shampoo Planet, a novel by Douglas Coupland, Pocket Books 1992; pp. 1-2

(A collection of quotes on the MTV generation's reaction to their parents' divorces can be found in 13th Gen., a book that's made up to look like Coupland's Generation X.)

"If we want less government, we must have stronger families, for government steps in by necessity when families have failed."
-- Jimmy Carter. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE, ASTATEMENT IN NEW HAMPSHIRE, AUG.3, 1976in I THE PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN, 1976: Jimmy Carter 463 (1978). Cited in Sean E. Brotherson and Jeffrey B. Teichert, "Value of the Law in Shaping Social Perspectives on Marriage", 3 U. of Utah Jnl. L. & Fam. Stud. 23, at 51.

"I have to start with a confession: This isn't the book I set out to
write. ... For example, I started this project believing that people who suffer over an
extended period in unhappy marriages ought to get out. . . . I thought
that striking down taboos about divorce was another part of the ongoing
enlightenment of the women's, civil- rights, and human potential
movements of the last twenty-five years. . . . To my utter befuddlement,
the extensive research I conducted for this book brought me to one
inescapable and irrefutable conclusion: I had been wrong."
Dr. Diane Medved in her book, The Case Against Divorce., quoted in "Divorce" by Kerby Anderson

"All around us, every day, we see the bitter fruit of the breakdown of the family. ... I believe the breakdown of the family is a direct result of our "no-fault" laws. ... Why should a couple invest in a marriage when it can be dissolved for no reason at all?"
Ga. State Rep. Brian Joyce, "REP. JOYCE INTRODUCES BILL TO END "NO-FAULT" DIVORCE"

"We must make individual self-fulfillment secondary to the health of the family."
Ga. State Rep. Brian Joyce, "REP. JOYCE INTRODUCES BILL TO END "NO-FAULT" DIVORCE"

Divorce is "a cure ... worse than the disease"--
"The meeting ..was addressed by Dr. Donnacha O hAodha, who felt that the cure was worse than the disease. He said that Ireland was fortunate to have the evidence of other countries to help us going down the same tragic road.
"Connemara Against Divorce warning" on Ireland On-Line at http://www.dublin.iol.ie/resource/ga/archive/1995/Nov23/19.html

Australian Study: Protect marriage contract
A think tank study reported in the Sydney Morning Herald called for recognizing marriage as a contract and bringing back "public, moral condemnation of irresponsibility and unacceptable conduct ..." as well as compensation for damages from such conduct. The study claimed that "The possibility that marital failures and misconduct will be taken seriously by the law would be a powerful incentive for reducing them." The article is a source of many useful quotations, which, however, may not be used on the internet. (Quotations here are from the study itself)
The study also alluded to the gap between people's beliefs and expectations about the sanctity of marriage and the law's hostility to marriage. It also points out that children are third-party beneficiaries of the marriage contract.
Study title: "Wedlock and Well-Being" Author: Barry Maley of the Centre for Independent Studies.
--The study, a small pamphlet, can be ordered inexpensively over the net from Centre for Independent Studies.
--The article describing the study is "Compo urged for marital injured party", By PHILIP CORNFORD, in the Sydney Morning Herald, September 23, 1996, at http://www.smh.com.au/daily/content/1996/Sep/23/national/960923-national6.html The Herald article is not to be quoted on the internet.

"Getting married in America is like doing business in Russia. Everything is up for grabs, everything is constantly renegotiated, and nobody has to keep their word. I think that makes for a lot of unhappy marriages, even though no-fault was supposed to take care of that".
--John Crouch, interview on the "Time Out" show with Jim Parmelee

"The unparalleled disaster caused by uniform and compulsory no-fault divorce
is reaching the consciousness of the broader population. There was always
the risk that the sheer numbers of people forced into divorce, crushed by
laws that stripped them of very basic Constitutional rights and property,
would be so bad, that the resposne is simple: Rescind the bad law." ...
"On every philosophical, moral and intellectual grounds, divorce statutes
should underscore that marriage IS a contract, yet one that can be broken.
But as in all contracts, breaking it comes with a penalty."
--Phyllis H. Witcher, testifying before a Pennsylvania legislative committee

Divorce reform is not government coercion
"So as we evaluate this legislation, we must remember what has happened
in our political culture even as we discuss the need for mentoring,
fathering, character-shaping charity, community empowerment, and curbing
divorce. Public policy has shifted away from our decades-long impulse to
empower isolated individuals. Policies are now being directed at
asserting institutional authority, social obligations, and moral
requirements over the individual. We must be clear: We are talking about
restoring authority in the noncoercive realm of civil society, not the coercive realm of the state"
Don Eberly, in "The New Demands of Citizenship"

"... The educated classes ... not only thought that the world ought to be a place where civilised people settled their differences over tea in the drawing room, but really thought that it was such a place. Thus they believed, and still believe, that if the causes of divorce and the parties' behaviour were excluded from discussion, conflict and bitterness would cease. They failed utterly to realise that there is no greater bitterness than that caused by injustice.
"On the whole the better educated classes still naively believe that they have a civilised divorce law ...
--Adrian Pellman, a British family law solicitor, in "The Divorce Legislation of 1971-1984: Retrospect and Prospect."

"It was said that relationships broke down for complex reasons, and that courts could not investigate these in depth. Perfectly true but irrelevant. What mattered was who broke up the marriage and why, not what deep feelings there were in a relationship. If this is not so, then in the eyes of the courts marriage as an institution is of less importance than "relationships" including cohabitation. It is a marriage, not a relationship, upon which the court is supposed to be adjudicating.
"Again, it was said that it was best for the children to see a difficult marriage broken up... . Why the children should benefit from losing a father, seeing him impoverished, probably losing contact with him, and a decline in their living standards, was not explained."
Adrian Pellman, a British family law solicitor, in "The Divorce Legislation of 1971-1984: Retrospect and Prospect."

"Perhaps the main cause of failure still lies in our attitude to love
itself -- that it is good only so long as it pleases, and that as soon as
it drops one degree below the level of self-satisfaction it is somehow
improper to attempt to preserve it. This is but a natural expression of
that contemporary fallacy -- the divine right to personal happiness, the
rule of self-love, to be enjoyed without effort, at no matter what cost
to others. Whoever gave us this right to be merely happy and what makes
us think it so enlightened an idea? In claiming the sanction to withdraw
from any relationship the moment our happiness appears less than
perfect, we are acting out a delusion which denies all but the most
trivial kind of love. Worse still, it makes a paper house of marriage,
flimsily built for instant collapse, haunted by rootless children whose
sense of incipient desertion already dooms them to an emotional
wasteland. Indeed the interpretation of rights that allows the
jettisoning of children in furtherance of their parents' right to
happiness, not only cancels that happiness but makes more than
reasonably certain that the next generation will be denied it too."
--Laurie Lee, quoted in "Models of Marriage Morals and the Law," a paper prepared for "The Salisbury Review" by Dr. John Campion

Ah, yes, divorce, from the Latin word meaning to rip out a man's genitals through his wallet.
-Robin Williams

"The mainstream policy-makers' attitude to these changes tends to be
either one of puzzled helplessness - pointing to complex and subtle
forces "deep in the fabric of society" that are beyond our comprehension
and control (a view expounded in the Lord Chancellor's proposals on
divorce), or one of Panglossian* fatalism -- pointing to changes in
society such as a shift from economic marriage to companionate marriage,
to longer lifespans and arguing that the family is not "under threat"
but simply "undergoing change" ... Demonstrating a truly remarkable feat of
intellectual agility, the Law Commission has managed to embrace both of
these positions at the same time in its recommendations ...
"...These changes are a serious social pathology, generated entirely as an artefact of the
legal system. We are witnessing and living through, not a social revolution, as some would
have it, but a legal revolution becoming increasingly decoupled from the
consequences of its actions which are being justified post hoc by
reference to an imaginary world that real people cannot live their lives in. Society is thus rapidly degenerating into a dangerous condition of State-administered social anarchy.
"Florid language, perhaps; but when we have a law, which in some thirty
years has, by its own admission, failed to deliver every one of its
objectives and failed to observe every prediction made of its
consequences for society, yet is still claiming success and advocating "more of the same", the time has surely come to take stock of where matrimonial law is leading our society."
--"Models of Marriage Morals and the Law," a paper prepared for "The Salisbury Review" by Dr. John Campion
[*Panglossian: Dr. Pangloss, in Voltaire's Candide, argued, at every turn of events, that everything that had happened proved that this was "the best of all possible worlds."]

Instead of getting married again, I'm just going to find a woman I don't like and give her a house.
-Lewis Grizzard

"...It became possible to ask questions such as "Why should I get married?"
or "Why shouldn't I get divorced?" The prevailing intellectual culture
was unable or unwilling to provide any good answers to these questions
which led to the unwarranted assumption that no good answers existed. But good answers to these questions did exist but they had hitherto been only implicit in the cultural norms of society.
"The intellectual culture developed a "new morality" under which the
cultural norms were deemed arbitrary, oppressive and unnecessary and
were swept aside in an anarchic stampede for "freedom". But, as the new
morality failed in its naivety to understand, in a world of material and
psychological dependency, one individual's freedom is another
individual's oppression. It also failed to understand that, as the great
psychologist B. F. Skinner pointed out, the function of cultural norms,
although appearing arbitrary and oppressive to the individual, is to
bring individuals under the control of the long term social consequences of their behaviour.
"... As a result we are now living in a society in which the processes that
normally could bring people under the control of the long term
consequences of their behaviour are severely weakened and ineffectual. "
--"Models of Marriage Morals and the Law," a paper prepared for "The Salisbury Review" by Dr. John Campion

"In the future, the major share of the costs of divorce ... should be borne by the party who is at fault (or by the party who initiated the divorce if no fault is found). ... During divorce proceedings, children should be represented by a separate attorney ... representing their interests (which may often be for the parents to remain together." )
--Patrick Fagan of the Heritage Foundation, in Issues '96, the Heritage Foundation's official platform for public policy after the 1996 elections (pp. 59-60).

50% statistic is not so simple -- moved to separate page, expanded

'Most [divorce] petitioners, in my experience, are egotistical, selfish and self-seeking'
-- Lord Meston, Q.C., quoted by Mark Thomas in Message-Id: <KkPPlBA3vHGzEwXe@reigram.demon.co.uk>, 1997/03/01 Newsgroups: uk.legal

"When states adopted no-fault dissolution laws, they failed to account for the ability of the law to shape attitudes and actions. Nobody was prepared for the tsunami of broken families swept into domestic courts or the assets gobbled up by courts, attorneys and other forms of loss. The legislatures came up with an idea and applied it to America's families without even considering that those families deserved at least as much consideration as a rare species of lizard. No one thought of mandating an Family Environment Impact Report. Nobody thought of even preserving a few families in Human Life parks or Zoos where traditional marriages could be observed.
Theory was applied directly to the lives of millions and the theory, unexamined for the potential impact, ignored the reality of a marriage as a vehicle for holding the capital investment of two individuals making a shared investment unique to that couple. ..."
-- Prof. Stephen Safranek, "Free Forty Million Americans: Privatize Marriage"

"Judaism sees the good life as fulfilled within the context of earthly
commitments. Traditionally, marriage, bearing and raising children are all
seen as sacred obligations, mitzvot.
"The life-long commitment of man and wife, their staying together to raise
their children, and their seeing their grandchildren around the Seder table
with their married children is not a quirky ideal of extreme
traditionalists; it is at the heart of Judaism."
William Berkson, "It's a Jewish Value to Support Marriage Ed". Washington Jewish Week, May 23, 2002

The effects of marriage breakdowns on women and children have
sparked the current bipartisan movement to shore up the institution
of marriage and put the fault back in divorce. Two weeks ago, at a
conference in Aspen, Colorado, Republican virtuecrat Bill Bennett
spoke at a seminar of investors and media executives about the social
scourge of divorce. "Don't just look at young black men or at women
on welfare," he said. "We've got to look at ourselves. The middle
class needs to set an example of standing by your family and your
children and your commitments." The Masters of the Universe, many
sitting with second or third wives, were visibly uncomfortable.
--Article quoted in newsgroup posting From: Misha@mail.airmail.net (Misha) Date: 1996/10/05 Message-Id: <53626l$auf@library.airnews.net>

No-fault's gift of this incredible power, this unilateral ability to pull the
rug out from under everyone else in the family on a whim, to wreck a family
while spewing rhetoric ... about saving it, is what makes no-fault evil.
--Posted to newsgroup by Tim Hanson

"The best marriages are those where both husband and wife realize that good marriages take
work and effort; they don't just happen. Easy divorce laws remove some
of the incentive to make a marriage work. But the greater problem is
that current divorce laws justify the attitude that 'if it doesn't work
out, we can always get a divorce'. Because of this, many marriages take
place that are doomed from the start. These doomed marriages are much
less likely to take place when a substantial legal commitment is required."
-- From an e-mail message to Americans for Divorce Reform

"But being in divorce court is a big intrusion into people's lives, and so is enforcing child support. So is having police officers showing up in domestic violence cases. So is bankruptcy court."
-- State Sen. David Ford, R-Hartford City, Indiana, saying why he was undecided on whether the state should encourage premarital counseling. From "State role in premarital counseling is questioned", Indianapolis Star, Sept 15, 1998, AP

"I'm old and tired, and there are some things that I just don't want to debate anymore. One of them is whether African American children need fathers. Another is whether marriage matters. Does marriage matter? You bet it does."
Washington Post Columnist William Raspberry, speech at the 1998 Morehouse Conference on African-American Fathers. Quoted in Colbert Il King, "Where Are the Fathers?", Washington Post Sat. July 10, 1999, p. A 19.

"The question of divorce is about us, the mainstream and middle class of America," says William Galston, professor of public affairs at the University of Maryland and a former policy adviser to President Clinton. "It's not an issue we can discuss without reflecting on our own
shortcomings."
--from States Put Minor Speed Bumps In Divorce Path, by Ann Scott Tyson, Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 10, 1996

I must reluctantly agree with the concept of no-fault divorce, but only if there are no children involved. Once a biological or adopted child enters the equation, the parties can no longer be viewed as islands unto themselves. Each child now has a vested interest in the dissolution of the marriage contract.
--Bob Green, Austin, Tx., in letter to the editor at http://www.isc.org/men/custody-divorce/nofault/green.html

"I, like God, hate divorce, and think that we as a society ought to be construing our laws to keep people together, instead of making it easier to divorce."
--Brian Marsh, editor of "Quote of the Day"

If neither party wants to stay in it, then the relationship has no chance anyway. If one person
wants to leave, and they have a good reason, they can. If they want to
leave for no particular good reason, then they have to pay the piper.
How about a system where whenever you had a divorce, you had to lose a
toe? Liz Taylor could star in the remake of Footless ...
I'm actually only half-joking. I think this new age/affirmation-mania/
positive reinforcement b.s. that actions should not have negative
consequences leads to masses of morons with delusions of entitlement and
invuneralbility. Let's not leave every emotionally-stunted, immature
idiot with the feeling that they too can do marriage.
Yeah... lose a toe if you get divorced... I like that thought ;)
Let's thank god I'm not in politics, eh? ;)
--Posted to newsgroup by Jim Sexton

"sleipnir@northernnet.com (JL) wrote: ... I recall a divorce case in Missouri, before no-fault divorce, granted because she kept a ham bone in the refrigerator for two weeks. It was the best excuse they could think of, and the judge was sympathetic."
--Newsgroup posting Re Truth in business--Commentary