Closest to the Fire: A Writer’s Guide to Law and Lawyers by Karen A. Wyle for a divorce, it became common to put on a fictional performance in court, with most often the wife hrough the 1960s, testifying that the husband married couples had been physically abusive in the U.S. could only or unfaithful. Sometimes, obtain a divorce based on the couple would arrange “fault,” usually meaning misconduct of one (and only for the wife to come home and find the husband with one) of the spouses. The a supposed lover hired for grounds included adultery; the occasion, but the wife’s abandonment; deliberate testimony would still contain infliction of physical or some falsehoods as to the emotional pain (“cruelty”); context of this “discovery.” and commission of a felony If the court decided to that landed a spouse in notice the staged nature prison. Sometimes, the hardly intentional or culpable of the event, that would constitute “collusion,” and ground of “impotence” also the couple would have the sufficed. A separation of choice of staying married or residences provided another trying a more convincing relatively neutral ground for performance later on. Or divorce in some states. they could bite the proverbial Defenses to an action bullet and arrange for one of for divorce included the them actually to commit an “them too” defense, known action that would justify the as recrimination. Success resulted in a Pyrrhic victory: divorce. **Either approach could make for colorful the mutually misbehaving fiction, with anything couple remained married. from a farcical to a tragic In cases where both tone depending on your spouses wanted out of the preference.** marriage, but neither had Since another name for committed acts necessary DIVORCE From Fault to No-Fault
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false testimony is “perjury,” this situation was quite unsatisfactory. In January 1970, the governor of California signed the country’s first “no-fault divorce” statute into law. This statute made divorce available to couples who both desired a divorce as well as spouses who were alone in wishing to end the marriage. The trend took off from there, with all but South Dakota and New York offering some form of no-fault divorce by 1983. New York, the last holdout, accepted no-fault divorce in 2010.
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