The divorce revolution.

• Author: Fallows, Deborah

The Divorce Revolution. Lenore Weitzman. Free Press. $19.95. The no-fault divorce laws that proliferated in the 1970s were expected to solve many problems. They were supposed to lessen the bitterness that usually arises out of divorce proceedings, erase some of the stigma of being sued successfully for divorce, and eliminate the nasty process of providing grounds for divorce by proving or fabricating proof that the other spouse committed some unwholesome act. Most important, no-fault was supposed to treat men and women as equal partners and, when a marriage failed, allow them to walk away with more or less equal shares of the family wealth.

Lenore Weitzman says no-fault has in some ways performed as advertised but also has had the unforeseen side effect of undercutting its most important goal. Under no-fault laws, divorce settlements have left many women, especially those with children, in much worse financial shape than under previous laws.

Divorce has always been a costly proposition fop husband and wifealike. In the old days, Weitzman says, the wife was typically the "innocent" party and as such was awarded the family house plus other benefits. She did not live as well as she had before the divorce, but neither did her former husband. Now that we have no-fault, divorce remains expensive, but the cost is borne mostly by the wife. After a no-fault divorce, Weitzman says, the wife's standard of living declines an average of 73 percent. Freed from many of the burdens of supporting a family, the former husband gets treated to a 42 percent rise in his standard of living.

How could this have happened? Weitzman says that no-fault's crucial error was to grant women equal rights without equal opportunities. After a no-fault settlement, the woman theoretically receives half the family's material possessions and half the net income for a certain period of time. After that point, each of the former spouses is on his or her own. The assumption is that the former wife and husband have economic parity with one another; usually, though, they don't. The court's division of the spoils takes into account only existing, tangible assets. So the wife with little job experience because of her years raising children may have to start from scratch...