"Unilateral" is an interesting way of characterizing no-fault divorce proceedings.
Marriage is a really a civil contract, and as we learned in law school, contracts are made to be broken. Instead of citing irreconcilable differences, we should just be allowed to move on.
"Unilateral" is a much better term than "no fault" for the type of divorce discussed IMO.
> A and B are legally married. B wants divorce, A does not.
1. "Unilateral" - A has explicitly no right to stop this
2. "No Fault" - Suggests that nothing done by A might cause this decision by B
Fuck #2.
Divorce is definitely a legal contract. If it's not "unilateral" then we are saying that one party has power over the other party and it's effectively a form of ownership. Idk why this has to be explained to people. It's about both what words mean and what they imply / how they make people feel.
Thank you for articulating what I was thinking. I was thinking what "unilateral" and "no-fault" implies in situations where there is a serious threat of domestic violence.
The idea of marriage as a legal, breakable contract is really really new, in a historical sense. Before unilateral/no fault divorce, it was an agreement that could only be broken under very restrictive conditions, backed up be severe social stigma.
When conservatives say they want to repeal unilateral/no fault divorce, what they mean is they want to roll back the idea of marriage as a breakable contract.
I've heard multiple people talk of women deemed "crazy" so they could be put in an asylum till they died while their husbands went and married someone else.
The law didn't *say* that men were more allowed to unilaterally end marriages, but
It depends on the time period and the country. In England&Wales, before 1859, a couple needed a specific Act of Parliament to divorce and it was basically impossible.
After 1859, a couple could divorce for adultery, abandonment or cruelty.
Divorce is not “breaking” a contract. It is legally terminating it.
My great-grandfather broke the contract by abandoning his wife and child. My great-grandmother, with considerable difficulty, petitioned a court to terminate that contract.
At some point I absorbed a factoid that after no-fault divorce way fewer *husbands* were murdered, but the rate of wife murder (always much higher) didn't shift much. Now I am wondering where I got that.
This is the weirdest Mandela effect. I know I've looked it up before. Maybe it was just deaths and murder is throwing off my search. I'll poke at it again tomorrow.
I also got sucked down this rabbit hole and found that in Iran the difficulty of getting a divorce without the husband's consent has contributed to a spike in husband-murdering: webarchive.archive.unhcr.org/202305221456...
"Unilateral" is a much better term than "no fault" for the type of divorce discussed IMO.
> A and B are legally married. B wants divorce, A does not.
1. "Unilateral" - A has explicitly no right to stop this
2. "No Fault" - Suggests that nothing done by A might cause this decision by B
Fuck #2.
Then they can learn and not expect to be catered to, especially when they decided to ask a definition question instead of looking it up. Sounds like a them problem, not a downside
Self-examine why their easy to self-handle confusion is a concern to you relative to erasure of patriarchy in law terms
I’m not looking to be catered to. I saw a term that I’d never heard before. I looked it up in a search engine and didn’t find an answer, so I asked here. It’s not a downside, or a problem. It’s me wanting to learn something.
Before no fault divorce didn't they have to come up with a reason even when both parties wanted a divorce. (Though I guess if both parties want it then it's pretty easy to contrive an uncontested reason.) So maybe no-fault and unilateral are slightly different.
A major but undercovered conservative policy goal is removing no fault divorce because they think women are property, unilateral is just an academic way of describing it rather than using the American colloquial term
