Senior Honors Thesis - Human Behavior and Divorce

[PoliBrain]

Hi alls,

I am a double major Neuroscience/Political Science undergrad working on my Senior Honors Thesis due very soon. It involves merging the two disciplines, and looks at human behavior during divorce, and what factors affect the final decision and finalization of divorces. Basically, it seeks to find predictive factors that determine what actions lead to the divorce finalization.

One of the Discussion parts has to be by my Committee’s orders:

“What resolutions, legislation, or other interventions could or would affect the decision to affirmatively commit to marriage termination. Are there advocacy groups that propose such or similar measures, is there already similar legislation in place, and why would your proposal be novel and ultimately beneficial to society?”

One of the best and most recent measures taken I have come across is Covenant Marriage. However, there are 2 problems:

1. Covenant Marriages account for 0.5-1.5% of all marriages in LA, AZ, and AK where it is enacted. People don’t seem to want it.
2. There is a direct statute that gives all 3 of those states personal jurisdiction over the marriage if ONE spouse still resides within those states. However, recent divorces in other states have apparently already settled the “Conflicts of Laws” between opposing jurisdictions, and rendered any real power of Covenant states null. Many family court judges look to other courts and how they have decided Conflicts cases, so this is a huge issue for the divorce reform movement.

In my extensive divorce research across 4 states I have found 15 instances where one spouse lived in LA, AR, or AZ (covenant marriage states), and the petitioning spouse lived outside those states. All 15 divorces were granted, despite appearing to be to the direct contrary to those 3 states laws. One of those cases in Texas actually addressed the covenant status in Arkansas, but it was explicitly ignored under the “public policy” exception addressed by the Supreme Court, and Williams v. North Carolina.

Now, I have emailed a ton of family/divorce reform/advocacy groups, and even the author of one of the states Covenant statutes, and no one wants to give me the time of day. Me being Catholic, I thought I’d get the opinions of suggestions from people on here.

Does anyone know any other persons involved in the Covenant Marriage enactment, or has participated in litigation defending the “Conflicts of Laws” applications? I really, really need the opinions or details from an inside person.

What does everyone think of other states ignoring the Covenant personal jurisdiction issues under “public policy exceptions”, and Williams v North Carolina? Does the Catholic Church take a position on that case which basically allows for migratory divorce in circumvention of more strict divorce laws?

Is anyone here actively working on eradicating Williams, or to try and set up more uniform divorce legislation that duly recognizes more strict divorce laws, and does not let someone move to Nevada for 6 weeks and skirt around 2 year waiting periods of counseling?

Anyone can throw me a bone here. Just something to help me get the rest of the 80% of the discussion done on this chapter. Thanks!!!

 

[St_Francis]

As to the other states’ disregarding the convenant marriage provisions–that seems very bad! They should respect the provisions of a “contract” made in another state just as they expect the conditions of a contract made in their state to be respected in another state, otherwise everyone could just move around for all different kinds of contracts.

Other than that, I don’t know if you have considered looking at the whole thing from an historical point of view…

 

[JimG]

I believe that use of contraception plays a part. I recommend that you obtain a copy of the May 2010 issue of First Things magazine, and read the article “Bitter Pill–A Cost Benefit Analysis of Contraception.”

 

[PoliBrain]

…obtain a copy of the May 2010 issue of First Things magazine, and read the article “Bitter Pill–A Cost Benefit Analysis of Contraception.”

I read through the document, however, it doesn’t seem to contain any specific policy initiatives or legislative/judicial challenges within it. Nor does it reference any. That document gives a ton of background, but it doesn’t discuss current ways forward from that standpoint. My understanding with that would be to attack the foundations of Griswold v. Connecticut or Eisenstadt v. Baird.

One of the major points of the last requirements of the Thesis is to address current or pending actions/legislation/initiatives. The only thing that comes close to that is Concerned Women for America and another agency suing the FDA over the “Morning After” pill on the grounds the FDA lacked statutory authority to approve it for non-prescription. Their briefs said nothing about Griswold not covering this type of contraception, and thus would be subject to individual state regulation.

The only other thing I could find is a Missouri town trying to force an unmarried couple with 3 children out of their house because of a town ordinance that prohibited more than 4 non-married/non-related persons from living together. The ACLU notified the town they would file suit under Lawrence v. Texas, and from what I can gather, the town backed down because of the severe cost of litigation.

That’s about it as far as I can see it. Of course there are the individual State Constitutional amendments prohibiting same-sex marriage, but they do not address divorce.

And I think that becomes the issue with Covenant Marriage. The Arkansas Family Council did respond to me, and paraphrasing their response:

“We don’t want to force other States to recognize Covenant Marriage because that would require recognizing and sanctioning types of marriage that are not created by statute. Basically, force a state to recognize Covenant Marriage, and they also have to recognize same-sex marriage.”

Is anyone aware of direct attacks or initiatives against Griswold, Eisenstadt, Lawrence, or Williams? That is what I somehow need to try and find.