Did Unilateral Divorce Laws Raise Divorce Rates? A Reconciliation and New Results

摘要

The "no-fault revolution" that swept the United States in the 1970s radically altered the parameters of family law. The new no-fault unilateral divorce laws allowed people to seek a divorce without the consent of their spouse, a dramatic departure from previous practice. This decade also saw radical changes in the structure of American families, with divorce rates rising dramatically across the nation. Are these two trends connected? This question has been argued at length, and each iteration of the debate has yielded new insights. H. Elizabeth Peters (1986) argued that divorce rates were unaffected by the change in legal regime, a finding rebutted by Douglas W. Allen (1992), and subsequently countered by Peters (1992). Parallel literatures in both sociology and law have also yielded fierce debate. Practitioners also seem divided: a recent survey of members of the Family Law Section of the American Bar Association found that around two-thirds of re- spondents do not agree that there is a direct correlation between higher divorce rates and divorce law liberalization (Laura Gatland, 1997).