Till no-fault us do part

Three months ago, a Michigan man left his wife and their three pre-school boys. His wife, 31, says looking back she should have seen it coming.

"There were some signs, but I just kept waiting for him to come around," said the Grand Rapids native, whose name is being withheld to protect the privacy of the family; she and the children hope for reconciliation. "He was spending more time with his friends; he couldn't stand to be with me and the kids."

The husband, a sheet-metal worker, said in October he wanted a divorce; she convinced him to at least try counseling. He went a few times, but one night in December, he didn't come home from work. His wife found him at a nearby tavern, with his arm around another woman. Even then, she said, she wasn't ready to give up.

"We came back to our house, and I said I didn't want him to go," she told WORLD. "I said I didn't want a separation; I wouldn't agree to a divorce. But he just packed up his things and he left the next morning. Gladly."

He filed for divorce in January.

"We both grew up in the [Catholic] church," the woman said. "I never thought this would happen to us. We came from families that feel divorce is wrong. My parents are against it; his parents are against it. The only place he's getting support and encouragement to do this is from his divorced friends-and from the court. He wants to just walk away from us; it seems like the court is on his side."

The court and the laws are on his side-for now. No-fault divorce laws have made breaking up easy to do. Instead of needing grounds to dissolve a marriage, a spouse now can unilaterally end one. Financial settlements are no longer linked to fault, so there are no cash consequences to actions such as adultery and abuse. So not surprisingly, U.S. Census data show divorce is up nearly 300 percent from 1960, to a current level of 1.2 million per year, and about half of all marriages today end in divorce.

But those no-fault laws are being targeted by pro-family groups who are well armed with data that shows divorce is more than a moral issue; it's as much a public health issue as smoking, and as much a poverty issue as illegitimacy. Just as public sentiment has been effectively swayed on those two issues, experts say it's time for a similar campaign against fast-and-easy divorce.

States such as Michigan, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Indiana, Maryland, Minnesota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Virginia, and Washington are looking at legislation to reform those laws. Michigan is way out in front, with a set of bills introduced on Valentine's Day that would effectively end no-fault divorce. The bills, brought by State Rep. Jessie Dalman, would require the divorce-seeking spouse to prove fault-to show what the other spouse did wrong. When the divorce involves children, the parents would have to attend counseling sessions outlining the ill effects a split would have on their children. The bill also rewards couples who get counseling before marriage-shorter waiting periods and lower marriage license fees.

The state House Judiciary Committee will take up the measure next week; proponents say it has a fair chance of eventually becoming law. Gov. John Engler has lent his support, as have the state's Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader (all Republicans).

Two decades ago, people who took the Bible seriously understood that divorce, except in cases of adultery or abandonment by an unbeliever, was wrong and would have dire consequences. Now social scientists and medical researchers have caught up with what believers always asserted: Divorce is bad morally, emotionally, physically, and spiritually. Men who are divorced or separated receive in-patient psychiatric care 21 times more frequently than do married men. Divorced men heighten their risk of cancer over married men by about as much as if they began smoking a pack of cigarettes per day. Divorce is now the number one factor linked to suicide rates.

And divorce is a fairness issue: The very "fairness" argument that initially was used to advance the first no-fault divorce law in California in 1968 still applies, only now it isn't men getting sympathy by complaining their wives "take them to the cleaners," but rather women who are often rightfully complaining that the current no-fault laws mean many husbands bail out on families leaving behind little or no means of support. As a rule today, divorced women see a decline in their standard of living of about 73 percent, according to researcher Lenore Weitzman, a sociologist at George Mason University and a leading authority on the subject of no-fault divorce. Divorced men, as a rule, see a gain in theirs of about 42 percent.

Such statistics run counter to earlier promises by California Governors Edmund G. Brown and Ronald Reagan that divorce law reforms would build stronger families-by making the divorce process easier and less adversarial.

In Grand Rapids, the abandoned wife is feeling the financial blow of her husband's departure. She gets $150 per week for child support for the three boys. Out of that she has to pay for food, fuel oil, electricity, the telephone, car insurance, and clothes. She's also paying to keep her 6-year-old in the preschool program he began before the breakup. Worried she couldn't make it on that sum, the wife took a job last week.

"I was debating whether to go back to work or not," she said. "I've always been a stay-at-home mom and I was proud of that. But I was kind of pressured by friends and family who said I'd have to get a job eventually."

She works as a secretary at a pump-manufacturing plant, but she finds that often she's spending more for daycare than she takes home.

Money isn't what worries her most; she says her boys are beginning to realize that Daddy isn't coming home. "My oldest son is getting angry about it," she said. "They wonder-'Maybe, if we're quiet, Dad will come back,' or, 'If we do this,' or, 'If we're not so nosy.' I try to tell them that it wasn't our fault, that this is something their Dad decided and we can't change to make him change his mind. But they don't understand it."

The long-term effects of divorce on children are undisputed: Divorce is a significant factor in whether a young person will use drugs, drop out of high school, engage in premarital sex, become pregnant outside of marriage, or end up behind bars.

Because women are so adversely affected-economically, emotionally, and medically-even feminists who pushed for no-fault divorce laws 30 years ago now are rethinking their stands. Betty Friedan has said the laws have had "unanticipated consequences" for women, including decreases in income and decreases in health and happiness (marital disruption is the biggest factor in stress-related physical and emotional problems, according to the National Institute of Mental Health).

Will a few legislative changes turn back the tide of divorce? Not by themselves, according to William Mattox, policy analyst for the Washington, D.C.-based Family Research Council. "It is possible for us to exaggerate the influence of a law here and a law there," he said. "The reason for the divorce revolution involves many factors. But the law is a teacher. Hopefully changes in the law today will help to bring about a re-examination of the issue of divorce."

Changes at church could also help. The Grand Rapids woman says she's disappointed in the response of her church-where her husband still regularly attends. "I went to our priest and he was very understanding," she said. "But he said this is a decision [my husband] made, that there's nothing I can do about it. He said people change in our society. He said he'd talk to [him], but this is just something that's happening all over. That didn't make me feel better. That was accepting it, and accepting it is condoning it."

That's not uncommon, even in the evangelical world, according to one observer. St. Louis divorce attorney Terry Jones is a Presbyterian Church in America elder, and he's seen the body of Christ turn a blind eye to divorce, perhaps because of fears of "intruding."

"There's little church discipline," says Mr. Jones. "Even in the evangelical, strongly conservative churches. But where churches do practice it, you see results. People want to know that the church cares enough about them to step in."

Church discipline should ideally try to address marital problems before the couple reaches divorce court, he said, "but I've seen marriages brought back from that brink." He adds that church discipline is also a way to show support for the innocent spouse.

Mr. Jones says he only takes on a case if there are clear biblical grounds for divorce. He tries to counsel those who come to him "that divorce isn't going to do what you want it to do. It might look like the answer now; in the long run it's not a good thing."

The Roman Catholic Church remains opposed to divorce, but in practice, there's often little that priests can do, according to Mark Squier, a layman connected with Retrouvaille, a Roman Catholic program involved in mending broken marriages. The Catholic church rarely takes action until a divorced member remarries, and then they're only barred from taking the sacraments, unless they obtain an annulment.

There's a growing movement among church leaders toward preventive maintenance. Led by evangelical writer Michael McManus, the movement seeks to win commitments from clergy members to perform weddings only when the couples have gone through premarital counseling. There's evidence the counseling works: When ministers in Peoria, Illinois, entered such a compact, the city's divorce rate dropped 20 percent in three years.

The growth of groups such as Promise Keepers and the National Fatherhood Initiative could make a dent in that rate. "Turning the hearts of men to their families may do more to address divorce and many other social problems than any other proposed remedy," Mr. Mattox said. Divorce statistics complied by the Family Research Council show that churchgoers are less likely to split. Their divorce rate is 17 percent, according to census figures. Those who cite "no religion" compare at 37 percent, while those who attend church irregularly (less than once a week) come in at 32 percent.

The Michigan woman speaks matter-of-factly about her marriage; she and her husband were high-school sweethearts, though they attended different schools. After graduating from high school, they dated for more than three of the five years before they eventually married. They planned for him to leave his high-paying job at the sheet-metal plant in a year or two so that the two of them could take over the family farm, raising grain and cattle. Their house, which they built themselves, is paid for.

Today, all of the earlier plans the couple initially shared have dissipated. Now, his embittered parents plan to divide up the farm and sell it. His visits to see his sons have dwindled. Of late, his settlement proposals have been harsh: At one point he offered to give his wife and the boys $25,000 and the minivan, but not the house, their 10 acres of land, and what she calls "his toys," including a bulldozer and an airplane.

But she isn't giving up. She knows she can't fight the divorce. "I have a lot of people praying for me," she says. "I know the things my husband has done in the meantime make it look pretty bad, like we would never be able to get together again, but God can change people's hearts. That's what I have to hope for."