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Jun 8th, 2004
Although divorce traditionally has had more negative financial effects for women than for men, a recent study conducted by Stanford business school indicates that women may experience life-preserving benefits from no-fault divorce laws. Professor John Wolfers and Harvard-trained economist Betsey Stevenson studied the impact of no-fault divorce laws adopted by various states in the 1970s and 80s and found that the rates of suicide, domestic violence and spousal homicide for women all declined.
Working in a burgeoning field known as household economics, Wolfers, an assistant professor of political economy at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, used microeconometric techniques to conduct the study. He and Stevenson looked at changes in the bargaining threatening point, a phrase most often used in relation to labor disputes. Like workers and employers, a husband and wife are more productive together than separately. In labor, employees demand a share of the joint product or they exercise their options to go elsewhere. Wolfers believes that the same holds true for a marriage: “a husband and wife can threaten each other implicitly if each has outside options.”
Under no-fault divorce laws one person may dissolve the marriage without the consent of his or her spouse. Prior to no-fault, most states required the consent of both parties or proof of fault on the part of the non-consenting spouse. “Under no-fault wives can always threaten to walk out without the husband's permission, changing the power balance in the relationship,” Wolfers said. In response to the lowered threat point, the husband is less likely to conduct himself poorly, resulting in a reduction in the incidence of domestic violence and spousal homicide.
Researchers were able to examine the impact of no-fault laws in different states, looking for specific patterns to develop in relation to the fact that states changed their divorce laws at different times. While California changed its law in 1969, Massachusetts did not change its divorce law until 1975. “If we expect the suicide rate to fall, we expect it to fall six years earlier in California than in Massachusetts,” said Wolfers.
Wolfers and Stevenson used the national database of death certificates to trace suicide rates before and after divorce reform and found that the rate of female suicide rate following a state's change to unilateral divorce dropped by six percent, while there was no significant change in the number of male suicides. As for long-term effects, there was close to a 20 percent decline in female suicides 20 years after the change permitting no-fault divorce.
Researchers also consulted national crime data and family violence surveys conducted in 1976 and 1985 by sociologists Murray Straus and Richard Gelles. According to these statistics, domestic violence against women dropped between the two surveys in states that had adopted no-fault divorce laws between 1969 and 1983, while it increased in nine states that either had historically had unilateral divorce or had never enacted this reform. The percentage of men abused by their wives increased in the 11 states with unchanged laws also, but remained the same in non-fault divorce states.
Critics of no-fault divorce claim that it leads to a breakdown of the family unit, but while Wolfers found that divorce rates rose sharply immediately after states adopted the no-fault laws, the trend reversed within a decade. The initial spike could be the result of pent-up desire for divorce, he reasons. Afterward, no-fault divorce may actually have had a stabilizing effect on marriages.
“The main effect of right-to-strike is not that workers strike more; rather, they can now credibly threaten their employer with a strike, and this newfound bargaining power leads to higher wages but not that many more strikes.” The same, he says, is true for the threat to divorce.
“If you're looking for the ‘smoking gun' to explain the decline in the traditional American family, it's not the no-fault divorce laws,” Wolfers said. “Rather than looking on them as the cause of many family ills, these laws may actually provide a safety valve for the pressures of family life.”
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Issues Regarding Child Custody
Child custody rights may be shared by both parents or, primary child custody rights may be awarded to one parent or legal guardian. Since the 1970s the family court will award child custody rights contingent with the best interests of the child.
Child custody for fathers following a divorce is one of the most important aspects of a dissolving marriage. Throughout history the legal presumptions about child custody for fathers has changed significantly. Before the twentieth century children were regarded as the property of their father. Under common law, child custody for fathers was commonly awarded, as children were considered a father's rightful property. A major shift occurred after this period in history, as family courts came to favor mothers in child custody cases. It was presumed that under normal circumstances, children did better when placed in the sole custody of their mothers.