Down With No-Fault Divorce

Beverly Willett fought for five years to stop her cheating husband from divorcing her—and she’s not happy that women no longer have that option in New York. That state, until recently, was the last one without a no-fault divorce law—meaning “the only way to exit a marriage was to prove the other spouse committed an actionable wrong,” she writes in the Daily Beast. She only gave up her battle when her husband moved to New Jersey to establish residency, then divorce her under that state’s no-fault law.

Willett did everything she could to “exercise my right to keep my family together,” she writes. “Nearly five years I fought to keep our bond from being broken.” Now, women (or men) must “tolerate unilateral divorce, where the power rests in one person's hands to vote on behalf of the whole family.” Willett argues that no-fault divorce is to blame for our nation’s high divorce rate—and that it “tosses aside the notion that one might want to stay married because of one’s pledge, or for the sake of the children.”
(More divorce stories.)