No-Fault Divorce: What Went Wrong? by Werner J Feld

Author:Werner J Feld [Feld, Werner J]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780429719486
Google: DCuNDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 44597968
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2019-03-04T00:00:00+00:00

Criticism of Weitzman and Peters

All scholars do not agree that divorced women became worse off after the introduction of no-fault divorce. The Weitzman and Peters studies were attacked by some authors including Herbert Jacob.47 Without acknowledging the change in the negotiating power of divorced women that occurred with the introduction of no-fault divorce, Jacob objected to Weitzman and Peters's focus on asset division, alimony, and child support. Jacob argued that any changes in property division and child support may be the result of changes in other statutes as much as the impact of no-fault divorce. He did not recognize that laws controlling the financial arrangements at divorce were generally not applied under fault divorce. It is true that the laws that controlled financial arrangements changed slightly with the introduction of no-fault divorce, but their importance has changed far more dramatically. It seems clear to me that the outcomes changed not because the laws changed, but because the laws rather than negotiated settlements began determining the awards in situations in which substantial assets or children existed. These laws were very detrimental to divorced women.

Jacob used data from the National Longitudinal Surveys of Labor Market Experience collected by Ohio State University to make three tests of the effects of no-fault divorce on divorced women to attempt to show that women were not worse off under no-fault divorce. His sample consisted of women who were considerably younger than those in the samples used by Weitzman and Peters. He looked first at the change in the salary and wage income of divorced women who had not remarried at the first contact by the survey after their divorce during the period 1968 to 1983. In all legal environments, fault and no-fault, he found that women's income at divorce and after divorce was substantially lower than before divorce,48 and the effect of no-fault divorce laws on postdivorce salary and wage income either weak or nonexistent.49 His test is ambiguous, however, as salary and wage income at and after divorce reflects the market conditions in the divorced women's state of residence rather than their financial settlements at divorce. The critics of no-fault divorce argue that the deterioration in the financial condition of divorced women and their children is due to the reduction in their negotiating power, not to labor market conditions in no-fault divorce states. The key distinction is whether the financial settlements received by divorced women differed under the two legal systems and Jacob's test did not address that question.

Using data from 1983, Jacob further concluded that no-fault divorce did not affect whether a woman would receive child support. Again, the relevance of his test is not clear, as the awarding of child support was common under both fault and no-fault divorce. The real issues would seem to be how much was awarded and whether it was collected. Most critics of no-fault divorce have concluded that the amount of child support received decreased under no-fault and Jacob found no evidence to refute that conclusion. His conclusion

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