A Modest Suggestion for Divorce Reform

Monogamous commitment formed between heterosexual couples in their reproductive years has constituted a common aspiration and a conventional expectation within developed societies for the past few centuries, despite it not being the norm for most of human history. In the modern era, governments have conferred legal rights and responsibilities to couples to protect the family in terms of property and offspring custody, and to provide evidentiary protection from officious intermeddling litigants and state prosecutors.

The Current State of Marriage

Unfortunately, however, over the past several decades legislatures across the United States have done great damage by adopting the scourge of “no-fault” unilateral divorce. This new legal reality dissolves conjugal bonds and pits one spouse against the other, all the while serving to enrich an army of family-law attorneys. Spurred on by a contemporary culture that is hostile to personal obligation, this situation also denies children a two-parent home due to a temporary or permanent lapse of judgment by one or both of the parents. But to avoid an impending demographic collapse, policies that encourage marriage formation and preservation would no doubt be beneficial to society in that they would encourage family participation among males and boost fertility and birth rates.

However, any piecemeal changes implemented at the state level would likely encounter stiff resistance from attorney lobbies, and could be circumvented by the divorcing party relocating their residence to a more accommodating jurisdictional venue. Whereas forming a marital union requires a bonding pair – whether a man and woman, or an alternative non-fecund arrangement that is currently favored by the elite – dissolution of the marriage bond merely requires a single dissatisfied member. That person can – in a momentary lapse of judgment – induce financial chaos and social atomization of his or her partner without any requirement or obligation to attempt reconciliation. Admittedly though, serious reflection regarding commitment probably sounds counterintuitive (see Proverbs 2:16-17) for young adults, who are addled by hormones and lacking experience in discharging their adult responsibilities.

Changing the Legal Landscape

The cards are already stacked against marriage. For example, envious colleagues can stoke resentment over ordinary shortcomings in one’s partner, and ravenous ambulance chasers exploit this opportunity to stoke this tension. The result has led to a more than doubling of the percentage of one-parent households over the past half-century. Consequently, a much needed mechanism to discourage divorce involves leveling the legal playing field without directly requiring the law or court biases to change in any particular direction. For purposes of this discussion and for the sake of clarity, the divorcing and non-divorcing partners will be labeled “instigator” and “respondent.”

Assuming populist Republicans can coalesce to pass beneficial legislation, the suggestion presented herein involves augmenting the tax code as relates to businesses that hire employees. In particular, the proposal is that expenditures for providing legal services could be discounted to reduce federal financial (i.e., tax) obligations. These services would benefit employees and their spouses by providing retainer accounts for law firms that are engaged in family protection. But under my proposal, only the respondent spouse would receive the employer’s benefit, and not the divorcing party. This would be irrespective of employment status, meaning the benefit belongs only to the respondent spouse who is being divorced, and not the initiator.

Although this proposal would initially only include employers that choose to provide this type of employee benefit, altering the playing field for even a few individuals would present both necessary and significant challenges to the divorce industry. By denying their ability to hold the respondent hostage to an unforgiving judicial process who may be without effective and affordable counsel, the divorce industry would face disincentives to mercilessly pillory their victims into despair, as presented in “The Red Pill” documentary by Cassie Jaye. The effects of divorce can take a serious emotional toll on husbands as noted by a report on men’s emotional pain that results from breakups. Hence, we see that today many young men avoid the risk of divorce by eschewing marriage altogether.

One might be prompted to ask though, how do two wrongs make a right? In particular, encouraging both spouses to duel (with lawyers) would seem to reduce the potential for reconciliation. But the answer is merely that the innocent should not be left without recourse when attacked by an aggressor – in this instance the initiator of divorce. One can be reminded of James 2:15-16 admonishing “if a brother or sister has nothing to wear and has no food for the day, and one of you says to them ‘go in peace, keep warm and eat well,’ but you do not give them the necessities of the body, what good is it?”

The same applies to marriage. While a more comprehensive solution would necessarily be preferable, by restoring “fault” for the dissolving of marriage bonds without mutual consent across the states, the proposal of subsidizing selective legal representation potentially raises the costs to the instigator, thereby attenuating the risks of becoming a divorce respondent, even under selective conditions.

A Change in Courting Culture

Presently, it can be observed that many bachelors display reluctance to approach young women – partly because of the threat of “MeToo” accusations damaging their reputation and their early careers, but also because they may be conscious that nearly seven-tenths of divorces are initiated by the wives (from various motivations). Meantime, social influencers continue to shame disengaged men for avoiding encounter and commitment, and bridle at others who urge caution. By mitigating the risk and consequences of divorce, young men would be offered at least some modest incentives to consider marriage and family.

Divorce reform via a more even playing field isn’t likely to immediately alter the contemporary dating scene, which appears at the present time, for various reasons, to frustrate both sexes. Young men face both feminist ostracism and hypergamy in overdrive encouraged by the aforementioned social media influencers. Promulgated by collegiate gender studies and girlboss feminists, misandry condemns all masculinity as “toxic”and demands traditional (i.e., real) men to be banished to the netherworld. In the meantime, eligible women seek only that miniscule strata of society made up of wealthy, athletic, tall, charming, and handsome (WATCH) men, while labeling the remaining adult male portion of the population as short, lazy, overweight, ugly, and poor (SLOUP, rhymes with “soup”) “pajama boys." Rather than engage with available men, some women seem to prefer remaining as cat-lady spinsters due to anxiety and/or disdain.  Ending grievance agitation in pseudo-academic curricula for midwit students just might attenuate such ingrained attitudes.

Despite frequent liturgical admonition to the bonding imperative (in Genesis 2:24, Mark 10:7 and Ephesians 5:31), the oft-repeated contention that monogamous marriage denotes a default condition among men warrants skepticism. Young men facing the prospect of permanent bachelorhood today remain in historical good company as one can reasonably surmise that most men in ancient history died as virgins because, at large, they are were expendable and they knew it.

References in scripture and the writings of Josephus present readily available ancient examples of men’s early demise: criminal altercation (Genesis 34:24-26), mass execution (Numbers 31:17; 2 Kings 10:6-7), fatal injury (Judges 9:50-54), mortal combat (2 Samuel 2:12-16 and Antiquities 7.12), starvation from famine (2 Kings 6:25), exile (2 Kings 15:29, 17:6, 18:11), disease from dysentery or plague (2 Kings 19:35), castration (Isaiah 56:4-5; Matthew 9:12), religious vocation (1 Corinthians 7:1, 7, 27), kidnap (1 Timothy 1:10), or chattel slavery (War 6.418). Moreover, polygyny has been prevalent since the agriculture’s advent, which sequesters maidens into the harems of dominant males (see 1 Kings 11:3), further depressing the availability (or interest) of lower status men towards the idea of family life.

Encouraging young men towards the ultimately rewarding challenges of matrimony entails persuading them that the “pot of gold at the end of the rainbow” isn’t just a substantially ephemeral ambition. To this end, divorce therefore needs to be made more difficult to accomplish, and this can be achieved with the help of the above-described limited measure. Even so, it is hopeful that modest improvements in this arena could potentially spark further progress in the long term.

Wouldn’t that be wonderful.

Photo Credit- Today's Family Lawyer