NC Family Staff | December 1, 2012 | SHARE: 
Marriage is in crisis in North Carolina and across America. In 1960, nearly three quarters of adults (or 72 percent) were married. Today only half (or 51 percent) are married. The reasons are multiple :
However, North Carolina could encourage marriage, serving as an inspiration to other states to do the same. Some common sense reforms to the state’s no-fault divorce and child support laws, along with churches and religious leaders in local cities creating Community Marriage Policies to help couples to build and sustain strong marriages, could potentially rebuild the marriage culture in North Carolina for future generations.
The U.S. divorce rate is triple that of Britain or France. After five years of marriage, 23 percent of Americans have divorced, but only eight percent of British or French, and 10 percent of Canadians. Why? If a wife wants a divorce in England, and the husband is opposed, the divorce will not be granted for five years, according to Andrew Cherlin in his book, The Marriage-Go-Round. Six years are required in France. Five or six years allows time to reconcile. In the U.S., an astounding 25 states have ZERO waiting period or only 20-60 days. That permits virtually no time for tempers to cool. Fortunately, North Carolina is one of the few states that require a year, and as a result, its divorces per married couples in 2008 were in the lower third of the nation.
Another reason for the nation’s horrific divorce rate is “no fault divorce.” One spouse simply declares to the court, “I want a divorce,” and they virtually always get it. In the old days, one had to prove their partner was guilty of a major “fault,” such as adultery or abandonment. Now the law requires that no “fault” be alleged. There are two reasons to oppose no fault divorce:
1. Unconstitutional. Both the Fifth and 14th Amendments guarantee that no person be deprived “of life, liberty or property without due process of law.” In a divorce, both partners lose money. Children lose the liberty of access to both parents, and one parent’s access to children is typically limited to two weekends a month. That is also a loss of liberty. A divorced man will live 10 years less than a married man; a woman, four years less. Thus, in a divorce all are losing life, liberty and property. Furthermore, four out of five divorces are opposed by one spouse.
2. Unjust to children. Children of divorce are three times as likely as those from intact homes to be expelled from school or to have a baby out of wedlock as a teenager, six times as likely to live in poverty, and are three to 12 times more likely to be incarcerated. Children of divorce become so vulnerable, they live five years shorter lives. When children of divorce reach adulthood, almost all cohabit and only 60 percent marry. They are also more likely to divorce, because they do not have a model of a successful marriage to follow.
The Coalition for Divorce Reform developed a proposal, the “Parental Divorce Reduction Act,” requiring that couples considering a divorce wait at least eight months to allow for a “reconciliation and reflection period.” If the couple has children, both parents must also attend classes on the impact of divorce on kids before filing for divorce, as well as take classes to learn skills to resolve marital conflict during the delay. A longer waiting period would be a big change for 25 states that either require no waiting period, or that require a waiting period of between 20 to 60 days for a divorce. Nine states with a zero to 60 day waiting period have divorce rates that are 35 percent higher than states, such as North Carolina, that require a year’s delay. That’s evidence that a one-year waiting period allows time for reconciliation. The proposal would also allow and encourage parents to remain under the same roof, another step to encourage reconciliation. This is important because currently most states with a waiting period require couples to move apart, which encourages spouses to begin dating, decreasing odds of reconciliation.
Missouri is considering another reform in which the state would designate one person as the “Responsible Spouse,” committed to preserving the marriage, who would get 70 percent of family assets. Why should a spouse who abandons a family for another person and files for divorce get 50 percent of family assets? Destroying the marriage, harming spouse and children, should not be rewarded. (If there is documented evidence of physical abuse, adultery or abandonment, the person filing for divorce would be designated the “Responsible Spouse”).
Child custody would be divided in half. A fouryear old child would live seven more years with the mother, and then seven years with the father. A father’s influence is most needed during the teen years, while a mother’s care is best for a young child. This reform would restore justice, enabling 80 percent who don’t want a divorce to gain child custody time and family assets. It would give the partner trying to save the marriage leverage to do so. This proposal will be introduced by Missouri’s Speaker of the House this year.
A coalition of family scholars reported in “Why Marriage Matters,” that the rise of cohabitation “is the largest unrecognized threat to the quality and stability of children’s family lives.”[1] Some 42 percent of children will live in a cohabiting household, and “are markedly more likely to be physically, sexually and emotionally abused than children in both intact, married families and single parent families.” To increase the marriage rate and reverse the unwed birth rate, the state should replace subsidies of cohabitation with subsidies for marriage. Millions of single mothers get welfare, Medicaid, food stamps and other subsidies based on the assumption they are raising children alone. Most, however, are cohabiting and enjoy partner income. However, if they marry, they lose public subsidies. Therefore the Governor could say: “North Carolina believes in marriage.
If you are cohabiting with children, we will not cut your benefits for two years, if you marry, and then we will taper them off. Marriage is what is best for you, your children and the state.”
Clergy bear some responsibility for the failure of America’s marriages. They marry 86 percent of Americans, according to a Hart Poll, yet 39 percent of Protestants have divorced, more than the 37 percent divorce rate of atheists and agnostics. And 35 percent of born-again Americans have divorced; 23 percent of born-agains have divorced twice! Among Catholics the divorce rate is only 25 percent. Still, too many churches are “wedding factories.” In recent years, two denominations have made important declarations on marriage and thousands of churches have cooperated with Marriage Savers to reduce local divorce rates:
Neither denomination—nor any other—opposed no fault divorce at its inception, nor have any called for its reform. The silence of church leaders on this issue is puzzling. Catholic bishops and evangelicals are vocal in opposing same-sex “marriage.” What about preserving traditional marriage? Perhaps they are silent on no fault divorce because the answers are not obvious. There is a way for churches to change the marriage culture in every community and state: Community Marriage Policies.
Marriage Savers’ Community Marriage Policies (CMP) have involved more than 11,000 churches in 229 cities in which diverse clergy—Protestant and Catholic—have been helped to do a better pastoral job in preparing, enriching or restoring marriages. Marriage Savers has trained thousands of “Marriage Mentor Couples” in those churches to implement five strategies that are particularly effective:
Impact. According to an independent study by the Institute for Research and Evaluation published in 2004 of the first 114 Community Marriage Policies, there were two major results:
The future of marriage is at stake, not just in North Carolina, but America as a whole. Nearly three-quarters of American adults used to be married. Now, only half are married. The nevermarried population has tripled. They are not happy people—95 percent would like to be married. Most are sexually active, and many have cohabited or are currently living with partners. And they are having lots of out-of-wedlock kids, who are more likely to be poor than children with married parents.
The sad reality is that only 46 percent of American teenagers live with their own married biological parents. Over half of today’s youth live in chaotic homes with single, divorced or cohabiting parents— a difficult atmosphere for kids to prepare for a very competitive future as adults. Last year, 7.6 million couples were cohabiting, more than triple the 2.2 million who married. And two-thirds of those who married were cohabiting, which means they are more likely to divorce. North Carolina’s high divorce and cohabitation rates can be reversed with the suggested reforms in this article.
