Tag Archives: Topic: Divorce

Times of Malta: “A 24-year-old judgment by the European Court of Human Rights may dampen lawyer Lynn Zahra’s hopes of getting the Strasbourg court to ‘force’ Malta to introduce divorce since it was not deemed to be a human right.”

Sioux City Journal: “Iowa ended a four-year slide in the number of couples getting married last year, but experts say the turnaround could have been aided in part by an April 2009 court ruling that legalized same-sex marriages. Also, Iowa posted the lowest number of divorces since 1970 with 7,286 dissolutions, according to preliminary statistics issued by the state Department of Public Health.”

Catholic News Agency: “The Institute for Family Policy issued a report this week showing that Spain has the highest rate of divorce in Europe, with more than 110,000 cases taking place each year.”

ABC: “While it may sound like hyperbole, experts say divorce can become ‘contagious’ in close social groups. … According to new research done by Fowler, along with professors Nicholas Christakis and Rose McDermott, being friends with someone who gets divorced makes someone 147 percent more likely to get divorced themselves. A person who has a sibling who gets divorced is 22 percent more likely to also split from his spouse, the researchers say.” | See this ADF Alliance Alert post for more information on the study.

AFP: “Egypt’s highest judiciary body on Wednesday overturned a ruling ordering the Coptic church to allow its faithful to remarry, the official MENA news agency said, in a move welcomed by the church.”

Wall Street Journal: “Baby boomers looking to protect their assets are increasingly turning to prenuptial agreements—legal contracts drawn up before a marriage that dictate what happens to assets in the event a couple should part ways, either by divorce or death. … Even before the financial crisis hit, prenuptial agreements were on the rise: Some 80% of matrimonial lawyers said they had seen an increase in couples signing them in recent years, according to a 2006 survey sponsored by the matrimonial lawyers group.”

Catholic News Agency: “Spain’s Institute of Family Policy (IPF) critiqued the ‘Express Divorce,’ or rapid divorce law, which was implemented in 2005, because the policy has created an increase of 4.8 percent in marital ruptures in the first three months of 2010 as compared to the same period in 2009.”

“New York state legislators have finished making it easier to receive a divorce. The state Assembly and Senate approved a package . . . [that] . . . establishes what’s called no-fault divorce—making New York the final state in the country to offer such a path to end a marriage.”

Leonard Link: “Custody of the children is shared, with the birth parents having various designations as primary residential parent, the children going back and forth at various times and being separated at various times. The current dispute reaches the court of appeals because of the insistence by Gibson County Chancellor George Ellis on including and enforcing a ‘paramour provision’ in the court’s order governing custody and visitation, as part of the latest round of revisions in the parenting plan. This provision says that when a child is in residence, an unmarried partner of the parent may not be there overnight. … Rather than remand for further consideration by the trial court, the court of appeals reversed outright the trial court’s ‘finding’ that a paramour provision was in the best interest of the children, and ordered that costs of the appeal be awarded to Angel.”

ACLU: “A three-judge panel of the Tennessee Court of Appeals has unanimously ruled today that a trial court judge was wrong to impose a ‘paramour provision’ barring a mother’s lesbian partner of more than 10 years from being in the home during the mother’s overnight visits with her children.”

Matt Gurney writes at the National Post: “Jeff Dolan spent Father’s Day in jail, locked away for failure to pay child support. Deadbeat dads don’t garner a lot of sympathy. But you don’t need to study Jeff’s case for long before you realize that he’s anything but a deadbeat. Instead, he’s a man hopelessly ensnared in a crushing bureaucratic machine: He’s in jail because he couldn’t pay child support, but he couldn’t pay child support because he was unemployed … and he was unemployed because the court took his driver’s license for failure to pay child support … after he went bankrupt paying his court costs. … Courts, in their earnest efforts to do right by families, are destroying them, instead.” | Via Wintery Knight.

The Washington Post: “The marriage education movement has already spawned a cottage industry of trademarked seminars and self-help manuals. It has popped up, in varying forms, at community centers and churches across the nation. And it has successfully persuaded leaders of the federal government and the U.S. military to spend hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars a year attempting to disseminate its teachings to the masses. At its core, it’s a movement that would ask of every divorcee: What if the truth was that you didn’t marry the wrong person? What if you just didn’t know how to be married?”

Metropolitan News-Enterprise: “‘The marriage relation is the foundation of all society, and is not to be severed on slight ground or for trivial causes. The policy of the law, therefore, is against granting divorces.’ That pronouncement came in a 1902 California Supreme Court opinion. … Nowadays, by contrast, a marriage is thought of by many as a transitory state in one’s life journey, with marital vows being but a tentative statement of present intent. The posture of the law with respect to divorce has been since the advent of a ‘no-fault’ system in 1970: ‘You want it, you got it.’”

“True, 49 other states have adopted no-fault divorce. But New York would be unwise to discard a law has produced almost the lowest divorce rate in America.”

Rose McDermott, Nicholas A. Christakis, and James H. Fowler, Breaking Up is Hard to Do, Unless Everyone Else is Doing it Too: Social Network Effects on Divorce in a Longitudinal Sample Followed for 32 Years (October 18, 2009). Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1490708

“Divorce is the dissolution of a social tie, but it is also possible that attitudes about divorce flow across social ties. To explore how social networks influence divorce and vice versa, we utilize a longitudinal data set from the long-running Framingham Heart Study. We find that divorce can spread between friends, siblings, and coworkers, and there are clusters of divorcees that extend two degrees of separation in the network. We also find that popular people are less likely to get divorced, divorcees have denser social networks, and they are much more likely to remarry other divorcees. Interestingly, we do not find that the presence of children influences the likelihood of divorce, but we do find that each child reduces the susceptibility to being influenced by peers who get divorced. Overall, the results suggest that attending to the health of one’s friends’ marriages serves to support and enhance the durability of one’s own relationship, and that, from a policy perspective, divorce should be understood as a collective phenomenon that extends far beyond those directly affected.”

Via Ross Douthat.

LifeSiteNews: “Second marriages are more than 90% more likely to break up than first marriages, according to a new study by Australian researchers. The researchers also found that cohabiting, having children before marrying, and an imbalance between partners in the desire for children are all correlated with marital breakup.” | What’s love got to do with it? Homogamy and dyadic approaches to understanding marital instability | Dr Rebecca Kippen, Professor Bruce Chapman, and Dr Peng Yu

Telegraph: “[The divorce ceremony] – a bizarre, but increasingly popular ritual among Japanese couples, who choose to end their marriages with the same pomp and ceremony with which they began them. … Yet with divorce still something of a taboo in Japanese society, the ceremonies have caught on as a way to publicly formalise the separation in a way that is socially acceptable to friends and family.”

Findlaw (AP): “Last week, however, the New York Senate passed a divorce reform bill, by a vote of 32-27, which would dramatically reform the law. Senate Bill 3890 would allow divorce based on the irretrievable breakdown of the marriage, regardless of whether either party had committed a particular kind of marital fault . . . In this column, I’ll explain what changes the bill would bring about, what problems it will hopefully remedy, and whether there are likely to be any adverse consequences of the new law.”

USA Today: “The world has changed so drastically that experts say today’s young adults have a lot to ponder, much more than decades ago. More education has meant delayed financial independence, which is a major reason young adults say they aren’t making their relationships official. Other reasons: Sex before marriage is widespread; two-thirds live together before saying “I do.” And there’s a whole world of other potential partners yet to meet . . . ”

Reuters: “Living happily ever after needn’t only be for fairy tales. Australian researchers have identified what it takes to keep a couple together, and it’s a lot more than just being in love. A couple’s age, previous relationships and even whether they smoke or not are factors that influence whether their marriage is going to last, according to a study by researchers from the Australian National University.” | Full text: What’s love got to do with it? Homogamy and dyadic approaches to understanding marital instability

LifeSiteNews: “On the last day of their annual meeting, U.S. leaders of Southern Baptists, a Christian denomination boasting 16.16 million members, approved resolutions recommitting themselves to promoting vigorously the institution of marriage and the family in their churches. The Baptist leaders condemned especially the scandal of divorce and legislative attempts to normalize homosexuality in the military and the workplace.”

Christian Post: “On the closing day of their annual meeting, Southern Baptists approved resolutions denouncing those responsible for the massive gulf oil spill, opposing pro-gay legislations, and lamenting the ‘scandal of Southern Baptist divorce.’ . . . ‘The Bible describes homosexual behavior as both a contributing cause and a consequence of God’s judgment on nations and individuals,’ it states, according to Associated Baptist Press.”

EurActiv: “International couples living in 14 EU countries will be able to choose which country’s jurisdiction should apply to their divorce as the European Parliament finally backed proposals tabled by the EU executive four years ago.” | Related: [6.11.2010] European nations seal divorce law pact

NY Times: “On Tuesday evening, the State Senate approved legislation that would permit no-fault divorce after a marriage has ‘irretrievably’ broken down for six months or more, without the need to identify a fault, like adultery or abandonment. The package must still pass the State Assembly, which is considering two bills that would adopt some version of no-fault divorce . . . ”

Times Union: “Senate Democrats are prepping for today’s vote on three bills that would ‘fundamentally restructure matrimonial law,’ primarily through the addition of no-fault divorce to the existing grounds for spouses to seek the dissolution of a marriage.”

Religion Clause Blog: “AP reports that the move responds to anger from Egypt’s Coptic Christian Church over a Supreme Administrative Court decision last month holding that divorced Copts have a right to remarry in the Church even when that violates Church law.”

AFP: “Couples of different European nationalities will be able to choose which divorce laws will apply under a new deal struck between 14 countries on Friday . . . ”

The Times of India: “With amendments on the anvil to make divorce easier for Hindus, a similar move may be underway for Sikhs. The Cabinet on Thursday cleared amendments to the Hindu Marriage Act and the Special Marriage Act, allowing the provision of ‘irretrievable breakdown of marriage’ to be included as ground for divorce.”

NewKerala.com: “The irretrievable breakdown of a marriage will be made an additional ground for divorce under an amendment to the Hindu Marriage Act and the Special Marriage Act approved by the cabinet Thursday.”

Washington Post: “According to the General Social Survey, 15 percent of U.S. households were mixed-faith in 1988. That number rose to 25 percent by 2006, and the increase shows no signs of slowing . . . But the effects on the marriages themselves can be tragic — it is an open secret among academics that tsk-tsking grandmothers may be right. According to calculations based on the American Religious Identification Survey of 2001, people who had been in mixed-religion marriages were three times more likely to be divorced or separated than those who were in same-religion marriages.”http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/04/AR2010060402011.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Albert Mohler writes at Crosswalk: “Perhaps the marriage of Al and Tipper Gore may yet be saved. We must prayerfully hope that it might be so. But their announcement has revealed a break-up on an even larger scale — the break-up of a cultural commitment to marriage as an enduring institution. We have become a culture that believes that staying together unto death is just too much to ask.”

Telegraph: “Divorced clergy are to be allowed to become Church of England bishops for the first time in a move which has been condemned by traditionalists . . . The Church is set to issue a statement announcing the new policy next month after legal advice made clear that there is no obstacle to a divorcee, or a priest married to a divorcee, being consecrated.”

AFP: “Couples of different European nationalities will be able to choose which divorce laws will apply under a new deal struck between 14 countries on Friday. The breakaway pact marks a significant extension of the process that allowed an inner core of European Union countries to set up the euro currency, or others to remain outside the continental border-free Schengen area.”

Stokholm News: “The new proposal gives spouses of different nationalities living in different countries or who live together in another EU-country the possibility to choose which counry’s divorce laws they intend to abide to . . . The Swedish resistance is about the issue that Swedish courts could be forced to base their judging on other countries’ laws.”

Courthouse News Service: “A father who quit his job as a corrections officer and joined a religious commune cannot escape child-support payments, the North Carolina Court of Appeals ruled.” | Via Religion Clause. | Shippen v. Shippen, (NC App., May 18, 2010)

Hurriyet Daily News: “Though people who download pirated music and films are running afoul of Islamic law, those who want to divorce their spouses over instant-messaging services are in the clear, Turkey’s highest religious authority has said.”

Religion Clause Blog: “In an appeal by Coptic leader Pope Shenouda from a lower court decision, the Supreme Administrative Court ordered the Coptic Church to permit men in two separate cases to remarry after their divorces even though the remarriage was not permitted under Coptic Christian religious law.”

“Family structure influences the economic ability of children. Divorce is particularly harmful for children’s mobility.”

‘Til Death Do You Part . . . And This Time We Mean It: Denial of Access to Divorce for Same-Sex Couples
Colleen McNichols Ramais, 2010 U. Ill. L. Rev. 1013

“This Note outlines the potential problems posed by the differences in states’ approaches to same-sex marriage, discusses the ways in which courts have responded to these marriages in the context of divorce, and evaluates potential solutions. Part II begins with an overview of pertinent law: the current status of same-sex relationships in the United States as of March 2010 and the principles of conflicts-of-laws as they relate to interstate recognition of marriage and divorce. Part III then examines the ways in which these principles have been applied in some recent cases and the constitutional implications of these applications. Finally, Part IV explores alternatives for remedying the situation, ultimately concluding that states have an obligation to provide a forum for dissolution of marriages and civil unions contracted elsewhere. This Note argues that, under the principles of due process as established by the Supreme Court in Boddie v. Connecticut, because these unions are legally created and can only be dissolved by court order and because jurisdiction in these proceedings is so intimately tied to domicile, statutes that operate to exclude same-sex couples seeking dissolution of their marriage or civil union from the courts of their home state are unconstitutional.”

SF Public Press: “Assemblywoman Fiona Ma, D-San Francisco, introduced the Separation Equality Act, AB 2700, sponsored by Equality California and the Conference of California Bar Associations. The bill consolidates the two processes and fees into one for divorcing same-sex spouses and domestic partners. Its other stated goal is to establish language clarifying that same-sex partners married outside of California are able to dissolve their marriages in California.” | AB 2700

NBC Chicago: “Laura Derbigney of Chicago has found herself in the middle of a custody battle between her Catholic husband and his Jewish ex-wife over how their 7-year-old son is cared for during paternal visits. A court order restricts Laura Derbigney and her husband, Nelson, from driving the boy in a car, allowing him to use electronics or to be fed pork and other foods as outlined in Orthodox Judaism.”

Interfax: “Finnish social workers warned Rimma Salonen at her last meeting with her son that she was not entitled to pray together with Anton, cross herself or talk to him about religion . . . In 2008, after divorcing Finn Paavo Salonen, Russian subject Rimma Salonen took their 5-year old son Anton to the Nizhny Novgorod Region. Several people, including the boy’s father, kidnapped the child from Rimma on April 12, 2009.”

Rhode Island Government Press Release: “Attorney General Patrick C. Lynch expressed his strong support today for legislation that would expand the RI Family Court’s jurisdiction to allow for the petition of a divorce proceeding regardless of whether the couple would have been eligible to marry in Rhode Island.” | HB 7990

Deseret News: “A Utah Supreme Court ruling issued Friday could open a door to recognition of gay marriage, polygamy and underage marriage in Utah, an attorney says . . . The Utah Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision, ruled that a 4th District judge who issued a divorce decree to Neldon and Ina Johnson in 2001 did have the authority to do that. The Johnsons had lived together for 37 years, had children and represented to the outside world that they were a married couple — even though they were never legally married.” | Johnson v. Johnson, No. 20080274 (Utah, May 7, 2010)

Providence Journal: “Drawing the attention was a bill sponsored by Rep. Timothy A. Williamson, D-West Warwick, that would allow couples to divorce in Rhode Island even if they were not eligible to marry here . . . Rhode Island does not allow same-sex marriages, but same-sex couples can be married in neighboring Massachusetts and Connecticut.” | HB 7990

CNA: “Couples who use natural family planning almost never divorce,” she pointed out. “The divorce rate at tops, we think is around 4%.”

New Zealand Herald: “The lowest divorce rate in 29 years is not a sign couples had a smooth ride in 2009 – rather, it shows Kiwis now avoid marriage unless they’re truly committed, says a relationship counsellor at New Zealand’s biggest provider.”

Times Record News (AP): “[T]he federal government doesn’t recognize same-sex marriage, nor do the vast majority of states, including Pennsylvania. Even with a valid out-of-state marriage license, gay and lesbian couples in those states face uncertainty, extra legal bills and inevitable rebuffs that straight couples avoid . . . ‘The government cannot issue a divorce for a marriage it doesn’t recognize,’ said ADF senior legal counsel [Austin Nimocks].”

“. . The paradox is this: Cultural conservatives revel in condemning the loose moral values . . . But if you want to find two-parent families with stable marriages and coddled kids, your best bet is to bypass Sarah Palin country and go to Nancy Pelosi territory . . .”

Radio Free Europe: “William Ward, the chairman of the Iraqi human rights organization Hammurabi, told RFE/RL that the Christian groups in Iraq are considering a campaign for separate legislation that would establish standards more in line with Christianity in such matters as marriage, divorce, inheritance, and child custody.”

CNN: “It’s only been two months since the District of Columbia legalized same-sex marriage, but local attorney Lawrence Jacobs is already cautioning his clients: Marriage may be allowed, but divorce will be much harder to do. While the District and five states have legalized same-sex marriage and consequently allow divorces, granting same-sex divorce elsewhere is often murky. As married same-sex couples cross into states that explicitly ban or don’t recognize gay marriage, they face a dilemma.”

Can a society that allows unbridled adultery rationally prohibit polygamy?

Times of India: “In what could become a prelude to introduction of a minimum age for marriage in Saudi Arabia, a 12-year-old girl has won a divorce from her 80-year-old husband.”

U. of Dallas News: “In [Jennifer Roeback] Morse’s opinion, the legalization of no-fault divorce is the most destructive redefinition of marriage. ‘No-fault divorce takes away the permanence feature of marriage,’ Morse said. ‘Legally speaking, you do not have a binding contract.’ People now approach marriage with a different mentality, knowing that it is not necessarily permanent. Through the spread of contraceptive technology, marriage has been redefined in a second way. ‘We have removed the idea of childbearing being central to marriage,’ said Morse. ‘It has turned sexual activity into a sterile recreational activity.’”

PR Newswire: “Today, Liberty Institute, representing State Rep. Warren Chisum and former State Sen. Todd Staples, argued alongside the Texas Attorney General’s office in Dallas’ ‘same sex divorce’ case before the Dallas Court of Appeals. Liberty Institute challenged the legality of District Judge Tena Callahan’s decision to grant a divorce to a homosexual couple, citing that such action is unconstitutional under the Texas Constitution, which does not recognize same-sex marriages or civil unions.”

Chicago Sun-Times: “Their divorce was settled three years ago, but there they were Friday, back in Cook County Domestic Relations Court, this time fighting over a contentious religious issue: Could a devout Jewish mother force her ex-husband, who isn’t Jewish, to feed their 7-year-old son kosher food when he has the boy?”

“‘Inject Fault Back into Divorce Proceedings’ examines Senate Bill 1127, introduced by Senator Michelle McManus (R-Traverse City). The bill would revamp Michigan’s divorce laws requiring that in cases where children are involved, a cause for divorce must be established. MFF is supportive of efforts such as SB 1127, which attempt to bring more justice into the law and slow down the divorce process, especially when minor children are involved.”

Chicago Sun Times: “In a divorce case that’s drawn national attention, a Chicago man who claims he has returned to his Catholic roots will be allowed to take his 3-year-old daughter to church, despite the objections of the girl’s Jewish mother, a Cook County judge ruled this afternoon.”

“A judge in Travis County declined Wednesday to consider Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott’s request to intervene in the county’s first same-sex divorce case, letting stand the judge’s February decision to grant a divorce to two women who had been married in another state.”

JURIST: “The European Commission on Wednesday proposed reforms to simplify and clarify international divorce laws. Under the proposal, married couples from different European Union countries could choose the country of the divorce, and the various courts would use a common formula to decide which country’s law applies when a couple disagrees. EC Vice President Viviane Reding said the law will protect the weaker spouse and reduce the costs of litigation.”

Arizona Republic: “Senate Republicans beat back a flurry of Democratic amendments to [Senate Bill 1199] and gave voice-vote approval to the measure, which would extend the time it takes to become divorced.”

The state Supreme Court, Lash wrote, has described a ‘fundamental right’ as ‘”inherent in man’s nature,” among the “basic rights of human beings,” and among the “Hallmarks of Western Civilization.”‘ The argument that a same-sex marriage passes such a test is ‘unsupportable,’ the judge continued.” [post update links to the opinion]

CBN News: “The decision by the three-judge panel affirms that the state’s courts do not have the jurisdiction to grant same-sex divorces . . . ‘What you have here is a fraudulent attempt to try to undermine the marriage amendment of Oklahoma that was passed by 76 percent of the voters,’ [Tim Tracey] explained. ‘So you have here a same-sex couple that alleged that they were married in Canada, but yet they could never even produce a marriage certificate.’”

“A midlevel state appeals court has ruled that even though New York doesn’t have a civil union law, its courts do have the power to annul a same-sex union made in another state.”

AP: “That reputation was put to the test Monday as the Supreme Court began hearing a dispute between a German heiress and her ex-husband, a case that hinges on the issue of whether prenups can be enforced in England, one of the few countries in which they have no legal standing.”

Mike’s Blog: “Hurrah for the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals for disallowing a lesbian divorce case in the state of Oklahoma. How can you issue a divorce for what was never a legitimate marriage? Legal Counsel Tim Tracey of the Alliance Defense Fund rightly asserted that this was a back door attempt to undermine the marriage amendment of Oklahoma that was passed by 76 percent of the voters.”

Bio: Timothy J. Tracey

Leonard Link: “A three-judge panel of the Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals ruled on March 11 that a same-sex couple who claimed to have married in Canada could not obtain a divorce from an Oklahoma District Court . . . The Alliance Defense Fund had intervened in the case on behalf of some Oklahoma officials who are opposed to same-sex marriage . . . ‘By this decision, we do not imply that an Oklahoma court would have jurisdiction where a valid foreign same-sex marriage is established. That issue is not presented here and we therefore do not reach it.’”

OneNewsNow: “The Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals has said “no” to a lesbian divorce. Legal Counsel Tim Tracey of Alliance Defense Fund (ADF) explains that what was at stake in the case was the validity of Oklahoma’s marriage law . . . ‘What you have here is a fraudulent attempt to try to undermine the marriage amendment of Oklahoma that was passed by 76 percent of the voters. So you have here a same-sex couple that alleged that they were married in Canada, but yet they could never even produce a marriage certificate.’”

LifeSiteNews: “The Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals has upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit that sought a ‘divorce’ between two women who claimed to have obtained a marriage license in Canada . . . ‘The government cannot issue a divorce for a “marriage” it doesn’t recognize,’ said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Austin R. Nimocks. ‘The people of Oklahoma have made it clear that marriage in their state is only between one man and one woman. The court’s decision was not only the right decision, but it was truly the only decision the court could legitimately make under the circumstances.’”

Lawrence Journal-World: “A proposal to establish ‘convenant marriage’ in Kansas was stripped out of a bill on Wednesday by a majority on the Senate Judiciary Committee.”

House Bill 2667

The Church Report: “The Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals has upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit that sought a ‘divorce’ between two women who claimed to have obtained a marriage license in Canada . . . ‘The government cannot issue a divorce for a “marriage” it doesn’t recognize,’ said ADF Senior Legal Counsel Austin R. Nimocks. ‘The people of Oklahoma have made it clear that marriage in their state is only between one man and one woman. The court’s decision was not only the right decision, but it was truly the only decision the court could legitimately make under the circumstances.’”

The Oklahoma Court of Civil Appeals has upheld the dismissal of a lawsuit that sought a “divorce” between two women who claimed to have obtained a marriage license in Canada

WJLA.com: “Now that same-sex couples can legally marry in the District, a new issue is popping up: gay divorce.”

Alan C. Lazerow, Give and “Get”? Applying the Restatement of Contracts to Determine the Enforceability of “Get Se

AP: “Touching on a sensitive issue among conservatives nationwide, the Republican-controlled Oklahoma Legislature is embroiled in a dispute over whether lawmakers should remain focused on the state’s budget problems and other fiscal priorities or delve into family issues, especially the state’s chronically high divorce rate.”