Quotes about No Fault Divorce

Tom Cotton

Feminists say no-fault divorce was a large hurdle on the path to female liberation. They apparently don't consult the deepest hopes or greatest fears of young women.

Cher

The only grounds for divorce in California are marriage.

Stephanie Coontz

A primary motivation for introducing no-fault divorce was, in fact, to reduce perjury in the legal system.

Timothy Murphy

Instead, I think over the years we have cut the strength of marriage and relationships by the law and weakened the institution. We have tried to deal with relationships with no-fault divorce, with child custody, with so many other avenues; and it has not helped.

Stephanie Coontz

Some people may long for an era when divorce was still hard to come by. The spread of no-fault divorce has reduced the bargaining power of whichever spouse is more interested in continuing the relationship. And the breakup of such marriages has caused pain for many families.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

A husband and wife ought to continue so long united as they love each other. Any law which should bind them to cohabitation for one moment after the decay of their affection, would be a most intolerable tyranny, and the most unworthy of toleration.

This was an incredibly radical notion at the time. For Catholics, there was no divorce of any kind allowed. And under the Church of England rules, a husband could get a divorce for a wife’s adultery. The social stigma of the rigid English society of the time was enough to make couples stay together long after they had lost affection and were even involved with others. Shelly saw this as a freedom and human rights issue.

Katie Hafner

'Unexpected Legacy' reports the findings of the California Children of Divorce Study, which began in 1971, a year after the nation's first no-fault divorce law was imposed in California. Wallerstein was the principal investigator on the study.

Stephanie Coontz

Unilateral divorce has decreased the bargaining power of the person who wants the marriage to last and has not engaged in behavior that meets the legal definition of fault. On the other hand, it has increased the bargaining power of the person who is willing to leave.

Thomas Jefferson

[It is] cruel to continue by violence an union made at first by mutual love, but now dissolved by hatred. The end of marriage vs propagation & happiness. Where [there] can be neither, it should be dissolved.

Historians have always been interested in Jefferson’s line of thought which allowed for the dissolution of marriage for no other grounds than lack of happiness. It forsaged his later views on the dissolution of the American union with Great Britain.

Allan Sherman

Adultery - which is the only grounds for divorce in New York - is not grounds for divorce in California. As a matter of fact, adultery in Southern California is grounds for marriage.

No Fault Divorce Quotes