No-Fault Divorce Law Coming Under Legislative Siege

Nancy Besemer’s marriage began well, but within a year, she says, it had become a series of beatings and constant humiliation. It took her 16 years to summon the courage to leave her husband.

“When I would get in the driveway after work, I would think, ‘Do I put the car in the garage or out?’ Either way, I could be wrong,” Besemer said.

She finally overcame her fears, walked out with one box of belongings and her two sons while her husband was gone, and got a divorce.

Besemer hates to think how much harder it would have been under a proposal to dismantle the state’s no-fault divorce law and require proof of cruelty or other specific grounds. The idea is part of a new conservative push in several states to make breaking up harder to do.

“It takes so much to be able to say, ‘I want out’--and then to have to prove it?” said Besemer, 48. “These people in these positions, they have so many hurdles already. This is going to be one more huge hurdle they may not be able to get over.”

On Valentine’s Day, Republican state Rep. Jessie Dalman renewed an effort that she began last year to weaken Michigan’s 24-year-old no-fault divorce law. Her bills would require proof of fault--desertion, infidelity, abuse, a more than three-year prison sentence, alcoholism or drug addiction--if one spouse opposes the divorce.

If both the husband and wife want to split, the no-fault system would remain. But, if children still lived at home, the couple would first be required to get counseling and a parenting plan.

Other serious efforts to change or repeal no-fault divorce are underway in Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. All 50 states have some form of no-fault divorce.

“People are finally waking up to the fact that no-fault divorce is not all that it was meant to be. In fact, it’s been harmful for children, and those consequences carry on into adult life,” said Dalman, who represents a district in conservative western Michigan.

The speaker of the Michigan House, the state Senate’s majority leader and Gov. John Engler--all Republicans--have endorsed her idea. Both Engler and House Speaker Paul Hillegonds have been divorced.

David Blankenhorn, president of the New York-based Institute for American Values, said he believes that many Americans are moving away from the idea that individual happiness is more important than staying together.

“Americans are tired of the high-divorce society,” he said. “But I don’t think that we are clear about what we want to do about it, or even clear that we want to do something about it.”

Besemer, who has since remarried, said that requiring spouses to prove abuse, though possible in her case, would be such a burden that it could keep them from leaving in the first place.

Other critics such as the Children’s Rights Council and many divorce attorneys say that repealing no-fault laws would do little or nothing to lower the number of divorces. They say it would lead to more bitter feuding between spouses determined to split.

“The end result would be the same, except even more damage would have been inflicted on my daughters,” said David Wightman, a substitute teacher who went through a messy divorce eight years ago.

Dalman disagrees with all of the criticisms, and says other laws provide adequate protection to abused spouses.

She and others believe that divorce has become too easy. She has drawn support from Christian-based family organizations, some lifelong homemakers and men’s activists who say no-fault divorces keep them from their children.

Barbara Kadlec, 52, said her husband left her four years ago after 25 years of marriage. She wonders whether they might have worked things out had it been harder for her husband to leave.

“It’s too easy for people today to say, ‘Let’s just get out of it and get on with our lives,’ ” Kadlec said. “No marriage is all bliss.”

Some feel that a little tinkering with the current law could help. Options such as a longer waiting period and requiring parent education could be more useful than ending no-fault itself, they said.

“There must be some middle ground between having no commitment for all intents and purposes and having a situation where people are literally trapped,” said Ira Lurvey, a Los Angeles divorce attorney and incoming head of the American Bar Assn.’s Family Law section.

“Simple solutions are not the answer to complicated questions.”