Quote:
Originally Posted by HaigLaw  Quote:
Originally Posted by joshua Is someone here advocating "no-fault" divorces?  | Not that I've seen. But since a member has said that "no-fault" divorce is not legitimate, it may be fair game to say that many of these would constitute grounds for abandonment, in the Biblical and WCOF sense.
Otoh, I knew of one case over 25 years ago in Dallas County in which the husband left the wife and said he had become homosexual, and filed for no-fault divorce.
This woman had a lot of faith, and contested the divorce and demanded a jury trial. She told the jury that she did not believe the marriage was irreconcilable, and the jury believed her, so his request for divorce was denied.
They reconciled, and were back as husband and wife, the last I heard. I have not kept up with them in recent years, however.
I would have to say, though, that in over 99% of the cases of no-fault divorce, the divorce is granted on the word of one spouse only.  |
"No-fault" divorce is legitimate under the civil law, but just as there are a lot of things that are legal but morally wrong, so is "no-fault" divorce.
In Michigan, complaints for divorce are boiler-plate and contain, as "grounds,"
only the language that I cited above (I goofed: it's "objects" of matrimony, not "goals"). As a legal writer and researcher, I used to draft them from computer macros: you just fill in the names of the plaintiff and defendant, the date that one or the other officially left the marital home, whether there are minor children or whether the wife was currently pregnant, draft the summons, have a check cut for the filing fee, get it filed and have the process server serve the defendant. That's literally all there is to it. Whatever one puts in the complaint, the divorce
is automatically final within six months without children and within a year if there are minor children.
There is no way to allege fault in this state until it's time for the property settlement to be adjudicated. Only then can one spouse say, "(S)he cheated on me..." whether it's true or not. Sometimes even Christians will allege that for the sole reason that they want the judge to look more favorably on them as to child custody or the division of the marital estate.
No-fault divorce statutes are legitimate civilly, but they must be a stench in God's nostrils. They're just one more way that the devil is undermining one of God's most beautiful institutions, the one that symbolizes and is a picture of the union between Christ and His Church. Can
that union ever be severed and another union entered into? For any reason whatsoever? I've just been reading an interesting article by David Engelsma in the Protestant Reformed Theological Journal in which he argues these points from Jeremiah 3...
(If anyone thinks, well,
she's had a good marriage, she doesn't know what she's talking about, uh,
no... Both of us have had "grounds" against the other - temporary though they may have been - to have thrown in the towel at many points over the past 35 years. But we meant what we said: "...till death do us part."
Most things,
with God's grace, can or should be worked out.)
I applaud states in which it's possible for a complaint for divorce to be contested and/or denied, and I applaud spouses who contest such complaints and are willing to fight for their marriages. That's a wonderful story you cited, HaigLaw... Thank you so much for posting it. May God bless you.
Margaret
Ephesians 5:22-32...