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At first blush, this is a ridiculous proposal. But when you consider all the financial incentives to divorce, it does offer some balance. But the RIGHT way to do this would be to remove those divorce incentives. For example, states that have enacted presumed joint physical custody laws have observed a concurrent drop in the divorce rate.
The other question, of course, is whether abused women should be coerced in anyway to remain in abusive marriages. What about abused men?
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Once again, you are right on target, frank h. I would add, too, that another aspect these "brilliant" politicians are forgetting is that nowadays many men do not want to get married. Therefore, not every single mother in the world is solely responsible for her singlehood. A man in my own family recently fathered a child out of wedlock (the relationship died before she knew she was pregnant). The woman tried hard to rekindle the relationship, but the man refused. He didn't want the relationship, but he does want to be a father to the child and have joint custody. A tough situation, and one which both parties are responsible for creating, but, still, the decision not to marry is not always the woman's.
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by Anonymous User on Tuesday August 21, @05:11PM EST (#3)
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There are many people today who don't want to get married, period, including women. An article in the L.A. Times just yesterday said that Census data indicates the number of unmarried partners in the U.S. has risen by 72% since 1990. Most of these partnerships are heterosexual, and I seriously doubt that they all consist of one person desperate to marry, the other desperate not to. I'm guessing that in many cases, neither partner has any desire to marry.
This doesn't even take into consideration partners who don't live together, polygamists, polyamorists in group "marriages" (MMF, MFF, MMFF, whatever), swingers with no primary partners and many others who fall outside of the Census data.
There are also many couples who have chosen to be childfree, for a myriad of reasons. Not everyone is hellbent on further overpopulating the planet!
Not everyone wants to be a parent period. There is absolutely no legal benefit to a childfree couple legally marrying, which is one reason why so many childfree by choice couples never marry.
The government should get the hell out of marriage--and divorce--completely. State-sanctioned marriage and divorce are violations of the Constitutional separation of church and state. They are communist ideals that have absolutely no place in a free society. Think about it. We don't have state-sanctioned baptisms, bar/bat mitzvahs or Holy Communion (at least not yet). Marriage falls under the same category. It should be a completely religious affair, no gov't involvement at all. Unwanted, unconstitutional, un-American gov't meddling is what screwed up marriage in the first place. More of the same will not fix it.
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