No fault divorce

No-fault divorce is a divorce in which the dissolution of a marriage does not require a showing of wrongdoing by either party. Laws providing for no-fault divorce allow a family court to grant a divorce in response to a petition by either party of the marriage without requiring the petitioner to provide evidence that the defendant has committed a breach of the marital contract.

The first modern no-fault divorce law was enacted in Russia in December 1917 during the October Revolution in November the same year. Regarding marriage as a bourgeois institution, the new government transferred divorce jurisdiction from the Russian Orthodox Church to the state courts, which could grant it on application of either spouse. A new family code was passed in 1926.

With a law adopted in 1969, California became the first U.S. state to permit no-fault divorce. California's law was framed on a roughly contemporaneous effort of the non-governmental organization National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, which began drafting a model of no-fault divorce statute for states to consider in 1967.

Australia established no-fault divorce in 1975, with the only ground for divorce being irretrievable breakdown of marriage, evidenced by a twelve-month separation. Canada effectively permitted no-fault divorce in 1986 by reducing the separation period to one year.

Several studies have looked at the effect of no-fault divorce on divorce rates in the United States. The studies typically find an increase in the short-term rate, but little long-term causal relationship. The most frequent explanation given is that the older laws were ineffective and not followed anyway, though there are some differing viewpoints. Economists Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers, based on findings in their research, argue that domestic violence and female suicide decline in states that legalize no-fault divorce. Specifically, they report that "states that adopted no-fault divorce experienced a decrease of 8 to 16 percent in wives' suicide rates and a 30 percent decline in domestic violence." They also argue that their research proves that there is no permanent effect of no-fault divorce laws on divorce rates.

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Wikipedia