The Effective Dates of No‐Fault Divorce Laws in the 50 States*

• Author: Denese Ashbaugh Vlosky,Pamela A. Monroe
• Published date: 01 October 2002
• Date: 01 October 2002
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1741-3729.2002.00317.x

2002, Vol. 51, No. 4 317

Special Collection

The Effective Dates of No-Fault Divorce Laws in the 50 States*

Denese Ashbaugh Vlosky and Pamela A. Monroe**

We use prior research and state legislative histories to develop a set of decision rules for determining the dates for adoption of no-

fault divorce laws in the 50 states. Social scientists have attempted to gauge the impact of no-fault divorce laws on the stability of the

family and on the rate of divorce, but the adoption dates used by these researchers varied widely. Such divergences yield conf‌licting

f‌indings on issues related to the impact of no-fault divorce laws on family outcomes. We examine in detail the varying methods used

in prior studies for determining no-fault dates, then suggest a method for resolving the conf‌licts. Precision in and standardization of

the dates of no-fault divorce laws used in this body of research will minimize measurement error and improve conf‌idence in the

research.

We propose decision rules for determining the dates of

no-fault divorce laws in the 50 states and use the rules

to recommend a standard set of dates for adoption of

no-fault laws in each state. We argue that agreement among

scholars on the dates is important to improve reliability and com-

parability of studies investigating the impact of no-fault divorce

laws on American families and society in general and, specif‌i-

cally, on their impact on divorce rates in the 50 states sinceabout

the mid-1940s. To this end, we examine closely the early re-

search on the impact of no-fault divorce laws on divorce rates

in the 50 states, as well as recently published research. We de-

scribe in detail the varying methods used in these studies for

determining a no-fault divorce law date for each state and the

resulting discrepancies in the dates. We then present and use our

rules to determine a no-fault divorce law date for each state,

compare our dates to those selected by noted scholars, and re-

solve differences in conf‌licting dates. The result is a set of stan-

dardized no-fault divorce law dates for the 50 states.

During the last century all states changed the way that they

allowed their citizens to divorce. In the 1970s alone, a ‘‘divorce

law revolution’’ resulted in legislative amendments to or repeals

of divorce laws in 37 out of the 50 states. Often coexisting with

the old statutes, the new laws allow individuals to divorce under

a ‘‘no-fault’’ system rather than under the previously restrictive

and cumbersome fault-based system.

Generally, fault-based laws grant a divorce if one person is

found guilty or ‘‘at fault,’’ and the other spouse is found ‘‘in-

nocent.’’ Consent of the innocent party is required before a di-

vorce is allowed (Weitzman, 1985). Finding a party guiltyof one

of the available and vague statutory grounds for divorce, such

as adultery, abandonment, or a protracted separation period, of-

ten is diff‌icult and expensive (Wright & Stetson, 1978). Social

scientists criticized the fault-based system as contributing to the

protracted acrimony between former partners who continued to

be in contact through parenting their children. Off‌icers of the

court suspected that individuals who wished to divorce under

fault-based laws often did so through perjury and the falsif‌ication

*This article is a portion of a paper presented at the 1998 annual meetings of the

American Political Science Association in Boston, MA, coauthored with James C. Garand.

We appreciate Dr. Garand’s work on the larger research project from which this article is

drawn. Approved for publication by the Director of the Louisiana Agricultural Experiment

Station as manuscript 01–25–0645.

**School of Human Ecology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803

(pmonroe@lsu.edu).

Key Words: divorce, family, law, no-fault divorce.

(Family Relations, 2002, 51, 317–324)

of evidence to get around strict statutory hurdles (Marvell, 1989;

Rheinstein, 1971; Stanley & Berman, 1977).

No-fault divorce was conceived as a way to make divorce

less acrimonious and restrictive, rendering the legal environment

neutral and noncoercive. No-fault divorce laws do not require a

f‌inding of the innocence or guilt of either party. Claimants can

f‌ile for divorce generally on the basis of the ‘‘irretrievable break-

down’’ of the marriage or the ‘‘incompatibility’’ of the parties

without proving one spouse is at fault. Both individuals are po-

tentially responsible for the care of their children, physically and

monetarily, and spousal support and property can be awarded on

the basis of the f‌inancial resources of each party, rather than on

the basis of their guilt or innocence (Weitzman, 1985).

Some states eased their divorce laws through strategic

amendments to existing fault-based laws, without enacting an

explicit, no-fault statute. They did this by amending separation

grounds to decrease the period of separation required before a

divorce could be granted, in some cases to as little as 6 months.

We suggest that for states with conservative divorce laws or a

generally conservative populace, such a move was politically

more palatable than enacting an explicit no-fault divorce law. It

is possible also that these amendments were more expedient,

perhaps requiring less time and political capital to enact than

alternative statutory changes.

Early in this divorce law revolution—even before all states

amended their statutes—social scientists attempted to gauge the

impact of no-fault laws on the stability of the family and on the

rate of divorce. Many of these studies (e.g., Marvell, 1989; Na-

konezny, Shull, & Rodgers, 1995; Sepler, 1981; Stanley & Ber-

man, 1977; Stetson & Wright, 1975; Wright & Stetson, 1978)

use interrupted time series designs, with the adoption of no-fault

divorce law by the state as the intervention (i.e., independent

variable) hypothesized to have an impact upon state divorce

rates. ‘‘Adoption of no-fault divorce law’’ is always indicatedin

these studies by a date (i.e., the year of adoption, enactment, or

effective date). Clearly, precise indication of the intervention

(i.e., measurement of the key independent variable) is important

to minimize measurement error and to improve conf‌idence in the

results of such research. Unfortunately, in more than two decades

of research, no single, no-fault date for each of the 50 states has

emerged as def‌initive for the purposes of studying the effects of

the legal changes on the family. In some cases, the dates used

by researchers vary by 1–2 years (usually the difference in the

enactment date and the effective date), but for some states the

dates vary by as much as 6–26 years (for Nevada and Maryland,

respectively).

The signif‌icance of consistent dates becomes more important

when we consider that research on the effects of no-fault laws

has, in fact, produced different f‌indings. Some studies show that