Virginia's No-Fault Divorce Reform Bill
Part of the Divorce Reform Page
Script for John Crouch interview on the "Time Out" show with Jim
Parmelee on Fairfax, Virginia Channel 10.
Airing Tues., Jan. 21, 1997, 2 p.m.; Weds., Jan. 22, 9 p.m.; and Thurs.,
Jan. 23, 6:30 p.m.
Other guests were Delegate Roger McClure of Centreville, the sponsor of
the bill, and Colleen Fannin of the Concerned Women for America. Their
comments are not in this script.
The host asked me to write suggested questions and answers, although of
course what actually ended up being said on the show would be quite different.
This is my suggested script, plus some other things that were said on the
show. It only covers me, not the other guests.
Complete video tape can be ordered from Channel 10
for $25
Other Crouch Articles
Questions:
(Answers are below; click on question to skip to answer)
What is the law right now?
What is the proposed change?
But if people are still determined to get a divorce,
what will this bill do?
You're a divorce lawyer; why are you supporting
this bill?
But aren't the laws set up to make sure women and
children are supported and the property gets preserved and divided fairly?
How much does a divorce cost, for ordinary people?
Didn't the divorce rate start rising before we
got no-fault divorce?
This sounds like more of a social problem than
a legal one. How can you expect to fix it with legislation?
Why do the trial lawyers oppose the bill?
What advice would you give to people out there
who are about to get a divorce?
What is the law right now?
To get a divorce, the spouse who wants the divorce must prove one of the
following "grounds":
· Desertion
· Adultery or sodomy
· Cruelty (basically means physical abuse or sometimes homosexual conduct)
· The other spouse was convicted of a felony
· They have been separated for one year (the new "no-fault"
ground, added in 1972)
What is the proposed change?
If the family has children under 18, the other spouse can stop a "no-fault"
divorce (a divorce on grounds of being separated for one year) by filing
an "objection."
Then what?
· Then either spouse can still get a divorce on any of the other grounds,
if they can prove them.
· Also, if the abandoned spouse can prove desertion or cruelty, she
can get a "bed and board" divorce that deals with support and
property, but doesn't allow remarriage.
· Even with no divorce, she can always go to court to get alimony and
child support.
· Once the children all turn 18, there can be a "no-fault divorce."
Who does the bill apply to?
The proposed change would not apply to people who had already separated
before it becomes law. Also, it only applies to people while their children
are under 18.
But if people are still determined to get
a divorce, what will this bill do?
(Delegate McClure replied, not in these exact words:) This bill doesn't
keep people from getting a divorce if both of them agree. But it does give
bargaining power to women and families so they can get adequate support.
In a case of two people in their twenties who have two little kids, where
the husband decided he wanted to be married to someone else, he would have
to negotiate a fair settlement with the wife, out of court, before she would
consent to give him the divorce. This bill would give bargaining power back
to the more responsible party who is looking out for the kids.
You're a divorce lawyer; why are you supporting
this bill?
Answer: Divorce is too expensive and damaging. We should go back
to letting people control the risk of divorce in their own lives.
--Marriage is the most important economic contract in your life,
but it's not legally protected any more. The law protects contracts between
corporations, or between you and your landlord or mechanic, but not your
marriage. The way it is now, marriage is the only contract that anyone can
break, any time, and not be held responsible for it.
--So 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. Neither side is
going to invest much in the marriage, because they know the other one can
leave at any time. Responsible young people don't want to get into a marriage
if those are the rules. People are always telling me, "If I were to
marry, I would want it to be for life." But they have no way to make
that decision. We no longer allow young people to make that choice. Now
they'd better not marry unless they can afford to divorce, and unless they're
willing to take the risk of not being allowed to have much role in raising
their kids.
--Also, unilateral divorce is a luxury ordinary people can't afford,
but the person who chooses it isn't the only one who has to pay for it --
the spouse and children do, too. The divorce itself, and all the other litigation,
costs a lot, and that's just the beginning. After that you find out that
two households cost a lot more than one. Starting a second family costs
even more. Then there's the expenses of visitation: you might be driving
up to sixteen hours every other weekend for visitation if you end up living
four hours apart; or driving eight hours and paying for a motel room every
two weeks. Meanwhile your new spouse is dealing with visitation for her
children from her first marriage.
--Just as individuals can't afford it, society can't afford it. Our
economy and society are still not really set up to deal with divorce, and
probably can never be, even though the culture encourages it.
But aren't the laws set up to make sure women
and children are supported and the property gets preserved and divided fairly?
Answers--
1- Yes, but you're dividing a shrinking pie, plus the people have
new expenses from new relationships and children.
2- Everyone gets poorer, and the judge is going to make everyone
share the sacrifice, whether they're the one who wanted the divorce or not.
3-It's true that the law lets the judge make one party pay the other's fees,
or divide the property differently to punish someone who does something
really awful or wastes or steals a lot of money. But it costs thousands
to prove anything like that, so it only works if you're dealing with really
big money. Justice is expensive. Also, in practice, the guilty try
to use all of these remedies against the innocent, and defending against
them sucks up all the lawyer's time and the client's money.
How much does a divorce cost, for ordinary
people?
A: Not counting what it does to the standard of living, and having to pay
support, and the expenses of visitation, you can get one for under $10,000
per spouse in lawyer fees if you're lucky and if both the spouses and their
lawyers are reasonable and fair. But you really can't predict that.
In fact, it is considered unethical for a divorce lawyer to even give a
client an estimate, because it's so out of control. Either side can pull
all kinds of stuff in court that just makes both the lawyers waste time
until one client runs out of money. I just finished one case where they
settled, but then the husband had to spend $70,000 just to enforce the settlement
agreement!
--A custody fight is more like $20,000 apiece. And the thing with custody
cases is that no matter how reasonable one side is, how much you give up
in order to stay out of court, the other side can always demand more until
you have to choose between fighting and never seeing your kids. Also, after
the settlement or the court decision, either of you can come back to court
the next year to try the case all over again. And you may be fighting about
visitation arrangements until the children are grown.
Didn't the divorce rate start rising before
we got no-fault divorce?
Answers: (1) Yes, but then people with children started divorcing, instead
of just the very young and people whose children were grown, and
(2) a whole culture geared up to promote divorce. When I was a boy we were
just beginning to have propaganda that tried to tell children of divorce
that they were still OK, they were normal people, they could function. But
very quickly that burgeoned into a cultural movement that pushed divorce
as the answer to all your problems, as a healthy choice. Advice columnists
started recommending it. We got this idea that a marriage was something
that "died" if you woke up one morning feeling like it had; and
if one spouse wanted to keep the family together to raise the children,
or to be economically viable, all of a sudden the culture started vilifying
that spouse as the one who was less advanced and mature, who was an obstacle
to "change," "growth," "progress," "the
development of human potential" etcetera.
This sounds like more of a social problem
than a legal one. How can you expect to fix it with legislation?
Answers:
1- Yes, the worst problem is cultural. The real problem is that divorce
is thought of as an option, a normal option. We're trying to change the
rules of life, just like they did when they first passed no-fault divorce.
2- Changing the law is a big part of that, though. Most people do go by
what the rules are, if they know them. And this will be a lot more effective
than laws about, say, drinking or drugs or guns, because a divorce is something
that you get from the government, like a drivers' license or a marriage
license. If the government won't give you one, you can't get one.
3-Also, I just want to point out that we aren't "reformers" of
the kind who would say, "Hey, I just realized that logically, marriage
is an economic contract, so let's change all our imperfect human institutions
just to be logically consistent." All we are proposing to do is to
go part of the way back to an institution that has worked for thousands
of years, to a set of rules that were based on how people wanted to
arrange their own lives, and not some arbitrary institution that was handed
down from on high. Traditional, binding marriage worked until the legislators
in this country began destroying it a generation ago. The new experimental
model of marriage and family, which has replaced it, really is not working;
it is not sustainable; most people can't afford it and society cannot deal
with it.
What advice would you give to people out
there who are about to get a divorce?
Do almost anything to keep the family together,
But don't sign anything without getting advice from people who have your
interests at heart.
Divorce will be a lot more than you bargained for, although I realize that
there are some people who do need to be apart for very extreme reasons.
You're entering an area where you have very little control or predictability.
You have to hope that both of you, and both your lawyers, will be reasonable,
practical and mature.
Hold fast to your friends and relatives. You'll need their support.
Above all, keep the children out of it. Even if you divorce, you're still
a family, and the parents have to present a united front to the children.
Why do most leading divorce lawyers apparently
oppose the bill?
At the state level, the bill has already twice been postponed for a year
for people to study it, and the divorce lawyers are opposing it, but not
studying it or giving many reasons. They don't appear to have a handle on
who's backing it or what our arguments are. They're not responding to our
arguments, they're ignoring them. Their arguments are the same ones they
could have made back when they first enacted no-fault divorce, before we'd
had a chance to see how large-scale divorce actually worked.
At the national level, the leading divorce lawyers simply assume that there
would be just as many divorces, but they would be fault-based divorces,
with faked evidence. This assumes that the law cannot do anything to affect
people's behavior or their choices in life. It also overlooks the fact that
faking evidence is illegal -- it's called perjury. Any lawyers who are involved
in faking evidence will be punished by the courts and will have their licenses
suspended by the ethics panels of their state bars.
(If you want to help out with the cost of providing this information,
contributions to Americans for Divorce Reform
would be appreciated.)
Complete video tape can be ordered from Channel 10
for $25
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Classic Marriage: Our Model
Legislation to Reduce Divorce, Reduce Role of Fault and Effect on Children
John Crouch, Executive Director
Americans for Divorce Reform
(703) 528-6700; divorcereform@usa.net
Arlington, Virginia