Divorce and the Issue of Reforms Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Divorce and the Issue of Reforms - Essay Example ich represents the most novel policy departure for it explicitly rejects long accepted wisdom that the divorce process can only bury and not save marriages. However, the marriage preserving effectiveness of these twin divorce reforms is limited by the fact that the marriage support interventions occur only after significant deterioration in the quality of the marital relationship has already taken place. In other words, the policies are reactive rather than preventive. An example of the latter approach is to use the school curriculum to teach appropriate communication and parenting skills that strengthen (future) marriages and make them more robust to unexpected shocks. This principle has been implemented in Florida's Marriage Preparation and Preservation Act of 1998 which will be discussed after outlining and evaluating both Louisiana's covenant marriage legislation and the English Family Law Act in greater detail. The key point is not that the couple will know more about their future lives, though there may well be some information acquisition, but that the future consequences of marital dissolution become more salient and less remote in their minds and decision making. Given evidence that many couples subsequently regret divorce, the effect may be marriage preserving. (Becker, 1988, 2) Conclusions At first blush, recent divorce reforms in the United States and England and Wales appear to be adopting different trajectories. The greatest social costs of divorce are usually incurred by children, especially when the divorce process is bitter and acrimonious. In an attempt to minimize unnecessary hostility, the Family Law Act places stress on the role of mediation rather than litigation in resolving disputes over asset division and child custody. However, evidence... The researcher of this essay was aimed to discuss the issues and the history of divorce as well as the reforms, that are related to it. Historically, family law either imposed a prohibition on divorce or adopted a fault approach in which divorce is only permitted on specific and restricted grounds such as adultery and desertion. Under fault, the presumption is that one spouse is guilty of a matrimonial offence which is responsible for the failure of the marriage and the law makes provision for its dissolution by the innocent party in adversarial court proceedings. The greatest social costs of divorce are usually incurred by children, especially when the divorce process is bitter and acrimonious. In an attempt to minimize unnecessary hostility, the Family Law Act places stress on the role of mediation in resolving disputes over asset division and child custody. However, evidence from the US suggests that divorce education which functions to equip parents with communication skills and reduces the exposure of children to conflict may be more effective in ameliorating some of the negative effects of divorce on the life chances of children. In summary, there is a hesitant trend in recent initiatives in family law to recognize that a good marriage and a good divorce both require mastery of basic relationship skills. It is concluded that better in the long run is to adopt a preventive rather than a reactive approach which teaches personal communication skills as an integral component of the school curriculum.