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by Anonymous User on Sunday October 21, @05:32PM EST (#1)
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Here's a much better idea. Instead of making it more difficult to divorce, why not do the proactive thing and make it more difficult to marry? Lots of people marry the wrong people for the wrong reasons. A naive belief in love at first site is often at fault, but also many people never, ever discuss hot-button issues with their intended (such as whether or not to have children) until after they marry...when it's too late.
It would be better to impose a yearlong waiting period on marriage, coupled with a requirement for a prenuptial agreement, coupled with new laws making these prenups impossible to invalidate unless you can prove your signature was forged. The prenup would be required to outline every facet of the marriage from how many children to have, to when, to financial issues such as whether one spouse will be a SAHP or not. Nothing will be left undiscussed or undecided.
Through this process, many couples will find that their beliefs and life goals are totally incompatible and irreconcilable, and they'll break off their engagement. I don't know about you, but that doesn't bother me. At least then, only two adults get hurt, instead of innocent children getting hurt, and since the adults never married, they can't extort anything from each other.
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by Anonymous User on Sunday October 21, @05:40PM EST (#2)
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A footnote. Not many people know this, but most divorces DO NOT involve minor children. They involve people who never had children together, or people whose children are grown, usually the former. Most marriages that fail do so within the first three to five years.
Because it would not affect most divorces, this law is nothing more than feel-good propaganda. Like I said, better to make it harder to marry in the first place. That is a measure that would truly reduce the divorce rate.
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Interesting comments, anon. It does sound much better to try to ensure that the marriage is going to be sound in the first place than to try to use a band-aid to try to keep people together after they've found out their marriage isn't what they expected. The prenup idea is very appealing to me, too.
See? I knew I'd get some good, thoughtful comments about this when I posted it. :)
Scott
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While I agree it is better to weed out those who are not truly ready for a marital commitment, I see this particular effort as a logical corollary to the constitutional rights of spouses to parent their children, and the child’s right to be parented. The argument most people use to justify joint physical custody leads me instead to the conclusion that it is unconstitutional to divorce the parents of minor children.
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This may be a more radical idea, but I'd like to see government stay the hell out of both marriage AND divorce altogether. Rather than creating more laws governing personal relationships, how about fewer? How about none?
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It seems
to me that the BIG, BIG Idea is the bill would result in more kids being
raised by both parents, which has been linked to all sorts of desirable
outcomes like: higher grades, fewer teen age pregnancies, less substance
abuse and incarceration. Although my thoughts on this are developing, it
seems like a wise public policy to me.
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The government should make the (so-called) marriage contract a serious obligation that can be legally enforced or get out of people’s personal affairs altogether. Either would be a vast improvement.
The current situation is a result of decades of biased feminist pressure and enables/encourages one partner to destroy the other’s life with impunity, this ability being largely gender specific. Couple this with the socially and legally obligatory “women can do no wrong” mentality and you have our current situation - a perfect balance if you're a misandrist.
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by Anonymous User on Monday October 22, @01:48PM EST (#8)
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What if the father never wanted the kid in the first place? What if the wife stopped taking birth control and didn't tell him, or what if there was a simple birth control failure but she refused to get an abortion? What if *he* wants the divorce because she had a kid he didn't want? What if she wants the divorce because she knows he doesn't want the kid, and *she* thinks it's better for both him and the kid to just let him leave?
I don't think it's good for people to walk out on their kids, but is it really a good idea for the government to force an unwilling parent to stick around? If they don't want the kid, they don't want the kid, and the kid knows that parent doesn't want him. Isn't it better for the KID if we let the parent walk away, and by that I mean no child support either? Isn't that the philosophy of c4m, that the government shouldn't force people to perform parental duties if they don't want to?
If we let the parent walk away, at least the kid can resign itself to the situation, get some therapy and go on with its life. Forcing the parent to stick around just keeps rubbing salt in the kid's wounds, and keeps false hope alive for the kid, not to mention tethering the father to a kid he can't help but resent. It's bad for both of them.
This is another example of a law that's meant to protect kids, but will instead do more damage. It would be better to let people get divorced, but abolish child support.
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In my mind, small though it may be, the only real justification for marriage and all the trappings that go along with it is the care and feeding of children. Somehow, the idea advancd that people got married to increase the likelihood that someone would be there to take care of them in their declining years. Then the idea further advanced that a couple should love one another 'til death do us part.' As I learned through my own (temporary) separation, love becomes a choice: after the honeymoon is over, you love your spouse because you choose to. There are people who separate because they truly hate one another, but there are many more who separate just because they stopped trying. All I can say is that, if you have children, you owe it to them to try harder to love your spouse and work at the relationship. Simply saying "he doesn't understand me" or "she's such a nag" doesn't cut it. Ultimately, if it doesn't work, then you have no choice.
Finally, there are other things like paternity suits and the like that do not regard marriage as a boundary, so making it harder to get married won't make it harder to live together and hence not make it harder to bear children.
It's interesting to note that, in states where joint physical custody is presumed, the divorce rate has declined measurably. The reason, we could all conclude, is that it's no longer as easy for a woman to fleece her husband for support and alimony just be filing for divorce. Ultimately, making it just a little harder to get a divorce would be beneficial, but eliminating no-fault divorce will undoubtedly make the process infinitely more contentious and bloodthirsty, which will be even worse for the children than an amicable separation.
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