Unilateral No Fault Divorce

A Unilateral Divorce has the following characteristics.

• Only 1 party (Plaintiff or Petitioner) petitions for the divorce
• Only 1 party (Plaintiff or Petitioner) makes an appearance in the court
• It is not at all significant whether the Respondent or Defendant accedes to the divorce

A No Fault Divorce has the following features.

• The Petitioner does not blame the Respondent for the breakdown of the marriage and does not point out any fault of the Respondent
• The Petitioner simply states that incompatibility of temperament or irreconcilable differences are responsible for the breakdown of the marriage

Initiation of Unilateral No Fault Divorce

Fabricated legal marital controversies and divorce difficulties were prevalent when only fault divorces existed. Due to these, the general public and legal practitioners became frustrated. This led to the enactment of the initial no fault and unilateral laws in the United States at around 1968. Since this year, an increasing number of states in the country have legislated unilateral and no fault divorces and this resulted in a significant liberalizing movement.

Trivia regarding Unilateral No Fault Divorce

As per the definition as well as the practice, unilateral divorces terminated the need that both the divorcing partners must commit to divorce. At the same time, no fault divorces made proving any grounds of divorce absolutely unnecessary. Till the end of 1985, a large number of the 50 states in the country had successfully confirmed some sort of unilateral and no fault divorce legislation.

During the above mentioned time span (1968 to 1985), it was found that the rates of divorce magnified tremendously and almost doubled from the late 1960s to the late 1970s. It must be noted that unilateral divorce laws were introduced at the same time as no fault laws or just after no fault laws. Till the end of 2004, all the 50 states in the country had endorsed some version of no fault divorces and approximately two-thirds of the states had accepted unilateral divorce laws.

Friedberg's Model

In 1998, Friedberg studied the relation between divorce rates and divorce laws and developed a novel model regarding this topic. State and year specific fixed effects were taken into account in this study. After a comprehensive use of this model, Friedberg proposed that due to unilateral divorce laws, the divorce rate increased by 17 percent from 1968 to 1988.

Some additional variables were appended to Friedberg's Model by Justin Wolfers in 2005. Wolfers contemplated on the dynamic impact of unilateral and consequently no fault laws on divorce rates. He took a larger time range into consideration than was taken by Friedberg. Due to this approach, the potential for biased conditions in a narrow time span was overcome. The dynamic model presented by Wolfers reached a result that unilateral divorce increased the divorce rate for approximately ten years since its introduction. After this decade was complete, the effect of unilateral divorce laws on divorce rates vanished.

Divorce Papers