Before "no fault divorce," people who wanted to dissolve their marriages faced serious obstacles.
Typically, one partner had to go to court and prove that the other partner was at fault. Reasons could include adultery, desertion, extreme cruelty, and habitual drunkenness. The judge would hear the evidence and then decide whether the claim was sufficient to justify granting the divorce. Divorce cases were reported in the newspapers, sometimes in great detail.
There was supposed to be one victim and one villain, so if both parties were deemed to be at fault, the judge might refuse the divorce. Or the judge might decide the situation just wasn't bad enough to warrant a divorce.
Here is a newspaper report of a case from 1845, in which the judge decided the evidence wasn't good enough.
As recently as 1969, a judge ruled that, since both spouses were cruel to each other, they could not be divorced.
In this case from 1848, the court ruled that a spouse's confession to adultery wasn't enough. Because of rulings like this, people who could afford a private detective would sometimes have their unfaithful spouse followed and photographed so they could be caught in the act, in front of witnesses.
In some cases, a couple would privately agree to manufacture a case, just so they could get free of each other. For example, they could arrange for a private detective to "catch" the husband in a hotel room with another woman. Or, a spouse accused of bad behavior might enlist friends to testify against him. Judges took a dim view of these cases. Here is one from 1900.
To 21st-century minds, this 1900 case probably seems like a marriage that should be ended, but the judge did not agree.
Some states had more lenient laws than others. Spouses who could afford it would sometimes go to Nevada and stay for six months (the required residency) and then file for divorce. Those in a hurry might take a trip to Mexico, where divorces were nearly always granted upon request.
Mexico fought back.
In the meantime, courts began declaring Mexican divorces invalid in the U.S.
As noted above, most of the people traveling for divorce were women, as were most divorce-seekers within the U.S. They often found themselves blocked by laws that limited the autonomy of married women. Ironically, lack of control over their own lives may have been a contributing factor to wives' desire to escape their husbands. Then they were blocked by a male-dominated legal system, petitions denied by judges who didn't think their circumstances were bad enough to let them go. In one frustrasting case, a woman who wanted to divorce her husband because of his drunkenness, was denied because he drank only on the weekends. In another, "incompatibility" wasn't sufficient to free a woman whose husband was a Peeping Tom.
For decades, various organizations campaigned for "no-fault" divorce, whereby spouses could end their marriages without needing to make or prove accusations. First legalized in California in 1969, the concept gained support throughout the country. Today, some version of no-fault divorce is available in all 50 states, although some still also offer a fault-based model.
Critics argued that no-fault would lead to a massive surge in the divorce rate. After legalization, there was a temporary increase in divorces, as the backlog of people who had been eager to divorce worked their way through the system. But then the divorce rate gradually dropped. Additionally, studies have shown that the female suicide rate dropped significantly after the introduction of no-fault divorce.
In recent years, some bloggers and politicians have campaigned for an end to no-fault divorce. Many of these people openly admit their intent is to restrict women's choices.
