I can't read this article, or others like it, without feeling like something is wrong. What kind of society would force someone to travel from Paris to New York to Sioux Falls, where they have to take up residence for 90 days, so they can maintain their own love life?
Even today, divorce is usually fraught with emotional turmoil. Months and years can be dedicated to equitable financial separation, child custody, living arrangements, etc, etc, etc. The toll it takes on a family is often irrevocable.
Then of course there's all the discrimination throughout history, starting with women but then of course moving to polygamy, miscegenation and gay marriage.
All of it makes me think that marriage laws themselves are a huge mistake. Couples who want to make their relationship legally binding should have to draft a civil contract that defines their relationship - stating clearly what's expected of both parties and how the relationship is fairly dissolved.
Basically, what we tend to call a pre-nuptial agreement should simply lose the "pre".
Remember that all this pre-dates the sexual revolution. Patrilineal inheritance + no DNA testing + no effective contraception + no effective anti-VD measures + extremely dangerous abortion + no employment prospects for pregnant or childrearing mothers + no social security = patriarchal society where maintaining your own love life is almost impossible.
It's not a coincidence that people who are opposed to one of those enablers of female freedom I've listed are more likely to be opposed to others.
Traditional marriage is a contract that defines the relationship - that's what the vows are - but it differs from other contracts in that it's also at least partly for the benefit of children who are not born at the time it is contracted.
Traditional marriage is one the cheapest and most resilient contract. I have weirdos in my family who make a living of going after other family members' inheritances, and found that getting married was the simplest, strongest and in fact cheapest way to protect my spouse and children.
Unfortunately this only apply if you intend to have a traditional marriage, heterosexual, a couple, and no intention to brake it. Marriage was invented by religious people back when they were the custodians of the laws. Because of this a lot of people are very strongly attached to that notion. Secular societies should invent a new word, and new contracts more suited for modern society.
Send paperwork to be signed to "help with sorting out with clearing all the administrivia related to a recent death in the family", which is in fact legalese that says that you accept to give your part of the inheritance to them.
Challenge wills in court to get a bigger portion.
I exaggerated by saying "making a living" (not enough money around) but very annoying at a time you normally focus on grieving, and definitely something I don't want my spouse and kids to have to go through.
> What kind of society would force someone to travel from Paris to New York to Sioux Falls, where they have to take up residence for 90 days, so they can maintain their own love life?
I'll counter with a different question: what kind of society would destroy families on the slightest pretext, or without any pretext at all? And why is 'maintaining [one's] own love life' worth destroying a family?
> The toll it takes on a family is often irrevocable.
Which is why it used to be so rare: because folks realised how terrible divorce really is.
The only good thing I can see about no-fault divorce is that it's reduced the number of spousal murders.
I agree with you that the marriage laws no longer make any sort of rational sense, and that civil marriage should be a civil contract, although from a different angle: the sacrament which united my parents together has absolutely no resemblance to the legal fiction abused by, say, Kim Kardashian.
> stating clearly what's expected of both parties and how the relationship is fairly dissolved
Seems to me that 'til death do us part' is a pretty big item in most marriage ceremonies…
If the marriage is only holding due to a contract, the family has already been destroyed. Your next phrase actually shows this: murders of passion are the peaks in a curve of harm that people do to each other. For each one, there is an order of magnitude more couples harming themselves.
I'm very glad my (unmarried) parents could separate themselves when time came and remain friends throughout my childhood, instead of developing the bitter contempt that is so common among divorced parents.
Which is why it used to be so rare: because folks realised how terrible divorce really is.
And people stopped realizing because? Unless you have a good reason beyond "people were just more sensible in the good old days", I find your argument unpersuasive.
What was more terrible were the conditions for divorced women, who struggled to earn any kind of decent income.
State laws granting sole control of marital property to the husband were only struck down by the SCOTUS in 1981.
I've seen from the inside what happens to families when spouses get divorced, and I've seen from the inside what happens when spouses are incompatible but stay together to preserve the family. Neither one is pretty, but the divorce is by far the better option.
> I'm very glad my (unmarried) parents could separate themselves when time came and remain friends throughout my childhood, instead of developing the bitter contempt that is so common among divorced parents.
If people can be friends, why can they not remain together?
> And people stopped realizing because?
Because folks got more selfish, preferring to satisfy themselves than to work hard for others.
> ... what kind of society would destroy families on the slightest pretext ...
The kind that likes to pretend that family stability isn't itself a good thing. It's tragic when families are torn or broken apart, but minimizing the consequences doesn't make the effects go away.
Across all demographics, children do better when they live in stable homes with two parents. The data backs this up 100%.
We can talk philosphically about whether the costs are worth it to achieve various goals (equality, freedom, etc.) but it's irrational to act like there are no downsides to avoiding or leaving marriage. The data even indicates that it's a net negative, on average. Maybe not for the people who hang out on HN, but certainly for poorer people with fewer opportunities.
It seems like the causal link on those statistics might be wrong. Sure, happy families might do better then divorced single parents. But how do unhappy couples forced to stay togather compare to single parents?
That's an interesting hypothesis. How would you do a longitudinal study on which couples are forced to stay together? I think we skipped some empirical work and jumped straight to a narrative in the way we reformed family structure over the decades.
Ironically, women and children (especially boys) seem to be the hardest hit, at least statistically. This is distressing since they were supposed to be the reason we started rethinking family structure in the first place.
Regardless, the census statistics are for all single households versus all married households. The never-married are also included in the statistics, so trapped-in-a-relationship certainly doesn't always apply.
Here's an LA Times column breaking down a few more studies:
Marriage at one time encompassed a range of duties: work in the maintenance of the home, maintenance in retirement, medical care (especially in old age), and care for children (and later responsibility for them). Seen as an economic institution, it actually has a fairly large footprint. If we allow that marriage was never entirely about love -- I'm not sure people would have cared that much if it was -- then we can understand why the dissolution and redefinition of marriage has occasioned so much conflict.
Ultimately we still lack a sound alternative for describing and enforcing the obligations that surround care for children. People have children in ways that are sometimes impulsive; and they are inclined to abandon them and their spouse in the same way. Marriage is a countervailing force, since it attaches penalties to abandoning the family and also makes it hard to start a new one without some resolution with the old one -- so people's energies are less easily redirected.
A lot of things in life shouldn't be painful, but they are (legally speaking). Starting a business, getting divorced, moving to another country for work, becoming a citizen of another country, getting an abortion, adopting a child - all of these are painful (unless of course one is rich) in terms of legal/paperwork/bureaucracy. This is assuming that one is clean with no baggage, has proper paperwork etc. If a person has criminal history (even a non violent one), it gets much worse.
For all the amazing advancements humans have made - it is sad that we can't make the absolute necessities of life easy and smooth. We have weird laws, we impose our opinions/ideas on others for no reason instead of letting them be - we are really a weird species.
No, some things should be "painful". Having a child shouldn't be frictionless; It's a serious commitment that people must not enter into lightly. Likewise in a marriage there is often one party who is taking advantage of the other, and there should be just enough friction to make sure there is time and consultation for fairness. But I agree that Kafka-esque type bureaucracy and idiotic rules or rules that impose the values of a specific religion are bad.
One of my friends tried to adopt, it was a nightmare. It is one thing to have proper rules in place so nobody is taken advantage of, but it is totally another thing to have so much bureaucracy that the only purpose it serves is to employ the bureaucrats involved. I am talking about the latter case here.
Another example - filing taxes. Why should it be so confusing? Who does it serve other than the middlemen who "help" you file taxes?
A lot has improved in the last century as a result of feminism, and the necessity of marriage laws is not as significant as it used to be. Still, I think they serve an important purpose.
A simple civil contract is not good enough for several reasons. First, people tend to make bad decisions when they are in love, and especially in situations where one party has fallen in love harder than the other, this would be very open to abuse.
The second problem is that marriages often produce children. And children are not property in the traditional sense, and I think it is not in any way reasonable to handle child custody with a pre-nuptial agreement.
The third problem is much more subtle and subjective, and I'm afraid I will have to do a bit of editorializing, but I think it is still quite important. The economy works well when everyone chiefly looks out for themselves, families and friendships work well when everyone chiefly looks after each other. Your mother didn't hand you a rental agreement the moment you were born, and while you may have had certain ad-hoc "I'll give you $20 if you mow the lawn" agreements with them, their desire for your well-being was based on much more than any potential value you might bring them in the future. A marriage is a lot more like a family than it is like an economy.
What a tragic, horrifying, and fascinating read. I find it interesting that while the bar (sorry) for suitable grounds for divorce seemed to be set at adultry, it appears her lawer did nothing to expanded upon her charge that her husband requested she engage in acts that could be considered adulterous.
That was in other states, like New York. In SD, it was just cruelty. That's one of the reasons she went there.
"But the case was in Judge Aiken’s hands alone. If he found that she had proven the baron’s cruelty, Maggie would be granted a divorce. If he found that she had not, the baron and the baroness would remain married."
Even today, divorce is usually fraught with emotional turmoil. Months and years can be dedicated to equitable financial separation, child custody, living arrangements, etc, etc, etc. The toll it takes on a family is often irrevocable.
Then of course there's all the discrimination throughout history, starting with women but then of course moving to polygamy, miscegenation and gay marriage.
All of it makes me think that marriage laws themselves are a huge mistake. Couples who want to make their relationship legally binding should have to draft a civil contract that defines their relationship - stating clearly what's expected of both parties and how the relationship is fairly dissolved.
Basically, what we tend to call a pre-nuptial agreement should simply lose the "pre".