Divorce reform by Christine Many Lawmakers aim to level the field for those going through divorce.

DIVORCE
Lawmakers aim to level the field

by Christine Many

Kim Polly spent three years in and out of court and went through five attorneys. Polly was not accused of any crime; she was just trying to get a divorce.

The Geneva resident had to borrow $12,000 from relatives and $15,000 from a bank to help pay more than $75,000 in legal fees.

"I can't pay my lawyers. I can barely feed my kids," the mother of three said last year.

"My lifestyle has totally changed." This year, after months of public hearings, state Sen. Kathleen Parker and other lawmakers are pushing changes in Illinois law designed to spell out Polly's rights, and the rights of others who are going through a divorce.

One provision, signed into law by Gov. Jim Edgar in January, allows disadvantaged spouses to get money to pay attorney fees up front. The aim is economic parity, according to Parker, a Northbrook Republican.

She says the plan is to overhaul Illinois' divorce law in stages. At the top of this spring's agenda is legislation enabling former spouses who received public employee retirement benefits in a settlement to get the checks directly.

Lawmakers also are looking at provisions on marital assets, maintenance for former spouses, child custody and child support.

"We want to make things more equitable for everyone involved: men, women and children," says Parker.

"Maybe if the system is more equitable, it will make people think before deciding to get a divorce, since no one will really come out a winner."

Illinois Issues May 1997 ¦ 33

In fact, public officials across the country are debating whether to make divorce, and marriage, more difficult. According to The New York Times, at least 21 states are re-examining their divorce laws, "and, more pointedly, the importance of marriage. Behind the talk is a sense that the nation is in the throes of a values crisis and that the breakdown of the family is to blame."

Indeed, Chicago attorney Marian Henriquez Neudel says she would make couples who want to get married go through the same process they go through when they apply for a driver's license. They'd have to pass a test, which would cover the obligations of marriage and the ramifications of divorce. "The average person doesn't find out about these things until it's too late," she says. Neudel also supports state-mandated premarital counseling, something Missouri has considered.

Meanwhile, some would go further. In Michigan and Florida, activists are pushing to reinstate fault standards when one spouse doesn't want a divorce. Such standards, eliminated by most states in the 1970s, would include alcohol abuse and infidelity. Parker says Illinois officials have discussed reinstating fault relative to the division of marital property when the marriage has lasted 10 years or children are involved. But she calls no-fault the most controversial issue in divorce law.

Still, the move against no-fault appears to be gathering steam. Maggie Gallagher, a scholar with the Institute of American Values and author of the book The Abolition of Marriage: How We Destroy Lasting Love, advocates total abolition of unilateral no-fault divorce. She says it favors the person who wants to leave. The person who doesn't want a divorce can try to stop it, but it's expensive. To encourage married couples to work out their problems, Gallagher would extend the waiting period for divorce. She suggests at least five years. "When you speed up the process, it encourages people in their troubled times to end their marriages quickly and not try to work things out," she says.

Christine Many, a graduate of the University of Illinois, works for Reader's Digest.

Editor's choice
BREAKING UP, BREAKING DOWN
The high cost of cheap commitment

The Divorce Culture,
by Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, 1997, Alfred A. Knopf.

Divorce, according to Barbara Dafoe Whitehead, has become as American as the 4th of July.

She means, in part, that the number of couples seeking to untie the knot skyrocketed in recent decades. It's difficult to find anyone who hasn't had experience with divorce, directly or indirectly. Half of all marriages are doomed.

But these chestnuts merely lend ballast to Whitehead's main theme: In a country with a cultural tradition of individualism, divorce has come to be seen as yet another means to self-fulfillment, a personal and legal entitlement. How, she asks, can we expect children to experience a stable and secure family life when marriage is so vulnerable to disruption?

Whitehead believes we cannot. She argues that children are the inevitable losers when individual need takes precedence over social obligation.

"As family members, children cannot act as unfettered individuals pursuing self-interests. By virtue of their biological and developmental immaturity, children are needy and dependent. ... They must depend on parents and on the larger social world to represent and serve their interests as well."

The Divorce Culture is one of the more reasoned contributions to a growing body of literature on "family values." Whitehead acknowledges instances when divorce is called for — in cases of high conflict, even violence between partners. And she's sympathetic to advances in women's rights inside and outside the home, advances that she argues helped spur a rise in the number of divorces since the 1960s.

Her concern, though, is a growing cultural acceptance of parents who abandon their marriages, and their children, out of boredom, or a desire for personal growth. Ironically, she argues, absent fathers are not truly liberated: Opportunities to share in their children's daily life are lost. And evidence suggests wide-spread divorce has generated new forms of inequality. "It has contributed to greater economic insecurity and poverty among women and children, and it has been a principal generator of unequal opportunities and outcomes for children."

But Whitehead's most critical assessment is in the larger social costs of family breakdown. We have, she argues, created a society of the uncommitted. "If we do not act with deliberate speed to reduce divorces involving children, we will surely become a nation with a diminished capacity to sponsor the next generation into successful lives as citizens, workers and family members."

But the change must come in our private lives. "The breakdown of marriage was not caused by changes in the tax code or divorce laws, and it is unlikely to be resolved by the legislative actions of Congress or the states." She would look, instead, to another American tradition, one in which "individual perfectibility and happiness are linked to the pursuit of the well-being of others."

34 ¦ May 1997 Illinois Issues