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No-fault divorce is the dissolution of a marriage, upon petition to the court by either party, without the requirement that the petitioner show fault on the part of the other party. Either party may request, and receive, the dissolution of the marriage, despite the objections of the other party. Wikipedia does not have an article with this exact name. ... There are various types of faults: In document ISO/CD 10303-226, a fault is defined as an abnormal condition or defect at the component, equipment, or sub-system level which may lead to a failure. ...

Russian history

No-fault divorce was invented by the Bolsheviks following the Russian Revolution of 1917. Before the Revolution, churches, mosques, and synagogues defined family life. It was the ecclesiastical law of the various denominations that controlled the family, marriage, and divorce. For example, the official registration of birth, death, marriage, and divorce was the responsibility of the church parish. Under these non-secular laws, divorce was highly restricted. It was essential for Bolsheviks, with their Marxist disdain for religion, to replace the ecclesiastical bond with an allegiance to the Communist party and the new Russian government; they sought to eliminate the old bourgeois notions of the family and the home. Bolshevik Party Meeting. ... The Russian Revolution of 1917 was a political movement in Russia that climaxed in 1917 with the overthrow of the Provisional Government that had replaced the Russian Tsar system, and led to the establishment of the Soviet Union, which lasted until its collapse in 1991. ...

The 1918 Decree on Divorce eliminated the religious marriage and the underlying ecclesiastical law, by replacing them with civil marriage sanctioned by the state. Divorce was obtained by filing a mutual consent document with the Russian Registry Office, or by the unilateral request of one party to the court. This new institution was designed to create a strong sense of allegiance to and an actual dependence upon the government.

United States history

Modern "no-fault" divorce came about because of widespread disgust among lawyers, judges, and the general public with the legal fictions that had become commonplace since the mid-20th century. In the common law, legal fictions, are suppositions of fact taken to be true by the courts of law, but which are not necessarily true. ...

Prior to the no-fault divorce revolution, a divorce could be obtained only through a showing of fault. This was something more than not loving one another; it meant that one spouse had to plead that the other had committed adultery or abandonment or some other similarly sinful act. However, the other spouse could plead a variety of defenses like recrimination. Often, a judge might find that the defendant had not committed the alleged act, or that both spouses were at fault for the fact that the marriage was dysfunctional. Either way, the judge would refuse to dissolve the marriage.

Subsequently, at some point the two spouses would each find some other person they really loved, and then would seek to marry that other person. But first, they had to get rid of their existing marriage or risk prosecution for bigamy. The solution was an uncontested divorce, in which both sides deliberately agreed that the wife would come home at a certain time and discover her husband committing adultery with a "mistress" obtained for the occasion. She would then swear to a carefully tailored version of these facts in court (committing perjury in the process), the husband would sheepishly admit to a similar version of the facts, the judge would convict the husband of adultery (or some other sin like cruelty), and the couple would be divorced. Polygamy, literally many marriages in ancient Greek, is a marital practice in which a person has more than one spouse simultaneously (as opposed to monogamy where each person has a maximum of one spouse at any one time). ... Perjury is lying or making verifiably false statements under oath in a court of law. ...

This procedure was explained by California Supreme Court justice Stanley Mosk in a passionate dissent: The Supreme Court of California is the state supreme court in California. ...

Every day, in every superior court in the state, the same melancholy charade was played: the "innocent" spouse, generally the wife, would take the stand and, to the accompanying cacophony of sobbing and nose-blowing, testify under the deft guidance of an attorney to the spousal conduct that she deemed "cruel." — In re Marriage of McKim, 6 Cal. 3d 673 (1972) (Mosk, J., dissenting) [1].

Needless to say, this empty procedure was appalling to both lawyers and judges, who felt that it made oaths meaningless and threatened to destroy the integrity of the American justice system (by making lying in court into a commonplace occurrence). For information on the type of fish called Lawyer, see the article on Burbot. ... A judge or justice is an appointed or elected official who presides over a court. ... An oath (from Saxon eoth) is either a promise or a statement of fact calling upon something or someone that the oath maker considers sacred, usually a god, as a witness to the binding nature of the promise or the truth of the statement of fact. ...

Throughout the 1960s, numerous commentators pointed out that it might be best to recognize that two spouses who were determined to end their marriage would get what they wanted by any means necessary. Therefore, they argued, the law should adapt by providing a straightforward procedure for ending a marriage, rather than forcing a couple who just couldn't get along to choose between living together in "marital hell" or lying under oath in open court. The most prominent advocate of this position was law professor Herma Hill Kay (the future dean of Boalt Hall, UC Berkeley's law school)^[2]. The 1960s, or The Sixties, in its most obvious sense refers to the decade between 1960 and 1969, but the expression has taken on a wider meaning over the past twenty years. ... Boalt Halls law library was expanded in 1996 with the North Addition, pictured above. ... The University of California, Berkeley (also known as Cal, UC Berkeley, UCB, or simply Berkeley) is a prestigious, public, coeducational university situated in the foothills of Berkeley, California to the east of San Francisco Bay, overlooking the Golden Gate and its bridge. ...

"No-fault" divorce was pioneered in the United States by the state of California with the passage of the Family Law Act of 1969. The Act was signed by Governor Ronald Reagan on September 4, 1969^[3], and it took effect on January 1, 1970. It abolished the old common law action for divorce and replaced it with the proceeding for dissolution of marriage on the grounds of "irreconciliable differences." State nickname: The Golden State Other U.S. States Capital Sacramento Largest city Los Angeles Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) Official languages English Area 410,000 km² (3rd)  - Land 404,298 km²  - Water 20,047 km² (4. ... Ronald Wilson Reagan (February 6, 1911 – June 5, 2004) was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989) and the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975). ... September 4 is the 247th day of the year (248th in leap years). ... 1969 was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1969 calendar). ... January 1 is the first day of the calendar year in both the Julian and Gregorian calendars. ... 1970 was a common year starting on Thursday. ...

By late 1983, every state but South Dakota had adopted some form of no-fault divorce (although some forms were not as easy to obtain as that in California)^[4]. The no-fault revolution was complete when South Dakota finally adopted no-fault divorce in 1985. 1983 is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... State nickname: The Mount Rushmore State Other U.S. States Capital Pierre Largest city Sioux Falls Governor Mike Rounds (R) Official languages English Area 199,905 km² (17th)  - Land 196,735 km²  - Water 3,173 km² (1. ...

Criticism

The most common criticism of no-fault divorce is that it has created an economic incentive for mothers to initiate unilateral divorces when no grounds, such as adultery or violence, exist. Courts empirically favor mothers when granting custody, and with the children comes child support. Mothers who initiate unilateral divorce tend to keep the children and a substantial portion of the property and future wages of the father. In a marriage involving disputes over finances, no-fault divorce gives mothers a legal way to sieze control of property and income without having to deal with the father.

A minority of family law scholars, of whom the most well-known is sociologist Lenore J. Weitzman, have argued that even though no-fault divorce succeeded in reducing the widespread problem of perjury and in making divorce less destructive by taking it out of the adversarial system, it also had the unintended consequence of causing divisions of property and alimony to be much more unfair to female spouses than under the old system^[5]. However, in 1996, sociologist Richard J. Peterson reevaluated the data acquired in Weitzman's influential 10-year study. He demonstrated that her analysis was fundamentally flawed and severely overestimated the economic impact of no-fault divorce; she subsequently conceded that his critique was correct^[6]. The adversarial system (or adversary system) of law is the system of law, generally adopted in common law countries, that relies on the skill of the different advocates representing their partys positions and not on some neutral party, usually the judge, trying to ascertain the truth of the case. ... Unintended consequences can be either positive, in which case we get serendipity or windfalls source of problems, according to the Murphys law definitively negative: perverse effect, which is the opposite result to the one intended The Law of Unintended Consequences holds that almost all human actions have at least...

References

^  Bishop, Katherine. "Sweet Victory for Feminist Pioneer at Law School." New York Times, 3 April 1992, sec. A, p. 19. The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ...

^  Dullea, Georgia. "How Women Fare In No-Fault Divorce." New York Times, 7 November 1985, sec. C, p. 1. The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ...

^  Gest, Ted. "Divorce: how the game is played now." U.S. News & World Report, 21 November 1983, p. 39-42. U.S. News & World Report is a weekly newsmagazine from New York, New York. ...

^  Johnson, Sharon. "No-Fault Divorce: 10 Years Later, Some Virtues, Some Flaws" New York Times, 30 March 1979, sec. A, p. 22. The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ...

^  Lee, Felicia R. "Influential Study On Divorce's Impact Is Said To Be Flawed." New York Times, 9 May 1996, sec. C, p. 6. The New York Times is an internationally known daily newspaper published in New York City and distributed in the United States and many other nations worldwide. ...