Recently, I ordered an audio book that lays out pro-marriage policies, by Dr. Scott Yenor. I think I had seen his name around on Institute for Family Studies, and other family policy web sites. Anyway, today I wanted to link to his article on no-fault divorce, and then take a look at how one state is enacting policies that are designed to reduce the divorce rate.

Here’s the article from the Institute for Family Studies:

American states initially adopted a fault-based idea of divorce, where a spouse could initiate divorce proceedings only when he/she could prove the other spouse had committed some fault like adultery, abandonment, or extreme cruelty. As time went on, states expanded the grounds for fault-based claims. Thus sat America’s divorce system until the early 1970s, when, following California, all states eventually adopted no-fault, at-will divorce laws. Such laws allowed one party to leave marriage for whatever reason or for no reason at all. This bold policy change, disguised as a bureaucratic adjustment, ended the idea of marriage as an enforceable contract.

The number of divorces soared. Destabilizing marriage ended up making marriage less attractive—and marriage rates have plummeted from 72% before the reforms to under 50% in 2022. Commentators find it increasingly difficult to talk about the tragedy of divorce as more people divorced. Poverty and suicide increased for children of divorce, as did depression, drug use, and crime.

On this blog, I’ve talked about how women initiate 69% of divorces. And if you look at the number of divorces featuring a college-educated woman, the woman initiates 90% of those divorces. In most of these divorces, the reason given is “irreconcilable differences”. No one is at “fault”. The person who is filing just is unhappy and wants out of the commitment.

Sadly, these divorces prove very costly to the men involved. They lose access to their homes, their wealth, their future earnings, and their children. Many men end up in prison for not paying their ex-wives. Some of them end up ending themselves.

More from Dr. Yenor:

When judges have discretion, they tend to favor women in settlements. Nationwide, men are the custodial parent only about 20% of the time, according to U.S. Census data. The numbers at the state level differ markedly. Most states have adopted a judicially-determined “best interest of the child” standard for allocating child custody. Under such laws, men generally see their children less. Both Texas and California have laws that favor joint custody of children, but in each of them, men actually see their children less than a third of the time. According to research by Custody Change, men see their children only 30%  of the time in New York. It is even worse in Illinois (23% of the time), Washington (24%), Oklahoma (22%), and Tennessee (22%).

So, men have to pay child support, but they never see their children. And it’s often the case that the woman poisons the children against their father. Although that seems like a good idea to her in the moment, it does enormous harm to the children in the long run.

Most people who follow men’s rights will know that Florida recently ended their policy of “permanent alimony”, which required men to pay their ex-wives for years and years until one or the other died. Feminists were furious with Ron DeSantis for doing this, but men were delighted. But there was more to that story, as Dr. Yenor explains:

Florida has restructured the default settings for negotiations under the at-will regime. Following Kentucky, a new Florida law assumes that a 50-50 split between spouses is in the best interest of the child (though the assumption is rebuttable). The bill garnered bi-partisan support in the legislature on the principles that parents walk into the courtroom on equal footing. Presumably, this will end the silent favoritism judges have traditionally shown women in custodial proceedings.

[…]Florida’s spousal support laws have long been based on a formula linking alimony amounts to the length of marriage, culminating in eligibility for permanent alimony for marriages lasting longer then 17 years. Under the new law, couples married less than three years are not eligible for alimony, while those married 20 years or longer are eligible to receive payments for up to 75% of the term of the marriage. Marriages lasting from three to 10 years are eligible for alimony for 50% of the term, while those lasting 10 to 20 years are eligible for 60% of the term. Generally, there are fewer payments for shorter periods of time. Under the new law, there are also more ways of ending alimony payments early, including factoring in the retirement of the person paying the alimony.

[…]Kentucky passed a similar law in 2017 with overwhelming bipartisan support, as did Arkansas in 2021.

Why is this important? Well, women tend to initiate fewer divorces if they have to allow their husbands to have access to his children. For one thing, she loses out on money. But she also loses the ability to poison the minds of the children against their father. That reduces the appeal of no-fault divorce. And it also causes women to be more careful before they marry. Since they know that the law doesn’t give them unlimited cash and prizes, then they don’t choose men based on appearance and feelings. Instead, they choose men who can actually meet their emotional needs, and perform traditional male roles. Because they know that marriage is for keeps.

And it works:

The number of court filings for divorce proceedings in Kentucky plummeted from 22,512 in 2016 to under 20,000 only a year later. It also coincided with a decrease in the number of domestic violence fillings, perhaps indicating that some charges of domestic violence were designed to tip the scales in custody proceedings. Kentucky’s divorce rate also sunk from 3.79 per thousand residents in 2016 to 3.3 in 2021 (the last year for which we have good statistics). Divorce rates are declining nationwide, so Kentucky’s 50-50 law may not be responsible for the entire decline. Statistics about the percentage of women who file for divorce in Kentucky are not available.

Now, people will say “this is terrible! what will happen to women who marry abusive men!” And my answer to that is “women need to learn not to marry abusive men”. Instead of choosing men based on appearances and feelings, women need to choose men based on moral character, worldview, and leadership ability. That’s the lesson that men had to learn when they were the victims of frivolous divorce and punitive divorce courts. Men learned to be careful, and now women must also learn to be careful. That’s “equality”.