Signs Indicate Shift in Stance Toward Divorce

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Amy Alt never saw her divorce coming.

Looking back now, analyzing the fragments of her broken eight-year marriage, she can spot the signals missed and the clues ignored--the long hours her husband spent away from home, the tiny inconsistencies in his accounting of his time. But divorce, well, that just seemed so far out of the range of possibility, the idea never occurred to her.

Steve Alt broke the news last October. “You don’t know how bad I don’t want to be married,” he declared one day. Then, two weeks later, late at night when the kids were snug in their beds, he said it: “I want a divorce.”

These are familiar words in America, the nation that bears the dubious distinction of leading the world in divorce. Nearly 1.2 million American marriages were dissolved by the courts in 1994--triple the 1960 figure--and experts predict that nearly half of all new marriages will end with a judge parceling out houses and cars and children like so much chattel.

Amy Alt can’t bear becoming a statistic in this trend. Not long ago, she thought she had the perfect life: a tidy three-bedroom house--the mortgage all paid up--on 10 acres of lush green pasture, separated by an apple orchard from the farm of Steve’s parents. An opportunity--so rare for women these days--to be a stay-at-home mom, to putter in the sandbox and watch “Barney” with the children while Steve pulled in $50,000 a year at a local sheet-metal plant.

Now she’s back at work as a secretary, and her three boys, 2, 4 and 6 years old, are packed off to day care every morning. She worries about paying the bills. Some days at work, she slinks off to the rest room and cries. “I’m just a single mother now,” she sighed. “I don’t want to be.”

There is, however, no way Amy Alt can stop her divorce--or even fight it in court. That is because Michigan, like every other state in the nation, permits no-fault divorce, in effect enabling a spouse to leave a marriage at any time for any reason.

Here, as in about 20 other states where no-fault rules are especially liberal, it is easier to break the marriage contract than it is to fire an employee or back out of buying a car.

“I feel very strongly that divorce is bad for society, that the breakup of families is just ruining society,” Alt complained. Of her husband, she added: “He doesn’t have to try to make the marriage work. I have nothing to hold him to it. It’s really unfair.”

Alt is not the only one who thinks wrecked homes equal a wrecked society. A legion of would-be divorce law reformers, with Michigan legislators leading the way, is trying to make it tougher for couples to split by reintroducing the traditional concept of fault into divorce.

While critics raise the specter of private eyes snooping through trash bins and divorce attorneys trumping up charges of spousal abuse, the reformers say no-fault has undermined society’s most sacred institution, reducing holy matrimony to “notarized dating.” Moreover, they add, divorce is a great impoverisher of women, and no-fault--with its emphasis on splitting assets 50-50--gives little bargaining clout to spouses who, like Amy Alt, want to remain true to their wedding vows.

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What is remarkable about this effort is not its chances for success; they are slim. What is remarkable is that for the first time in a quarter of a century, Americans have embarked on a national discussion of the laws that govern divorce--and, more pointedly, the importance of marriage. Fueling this talk is the gnawing sense, voiced by Amy Alt and many others, that the nation is in the throes of a values crisis and that the breakdown of the family is to blame.

Values fever has swept quickly over America. Four years ago, then-Vice President Dan Quayle was ridiculed for criticizing television character Murphy Brown having a baby out of wedlock. A few months ago, President Clinton told an audience at the University of Texas that the nation’s No. 1 social problem is children growing up without fathers--and no one batted an eye. When the fictional Murphy Brown became a mother, the media rallied around her. Now that pop star Madonna is pregnant, Newsweek ran a column urging her to marry the father of her child.

“We have reached a turning point in our national conversation about the family,” said David Blankenhorn, president of the Institute for American Values, a nonpartisan research organization in New York whose scholars are driving the divorce reform movement. “This certainly was not on anyone’s radar screen a year or two ago.”

What has landed it on the radar screen, in large part, is concern about kids. There is now a growing body of evidence that children of divorced parents suffer far more than anyone previously believed.

The research includes a widely cited 1988 study by the National Center for Health Statistics. The study found that children in single-parent families (including those whose parents never married) are more likely to drop out of high school, become pregnant as teenagers, abuse drugs and get into trouble with the law than those living with both parents.

Then, in 1993, social scientist Nicholas Zill reported that children of divorced parents are, regardless of their economic circumstances, twice as likely as others to have poor relationships with their parents, drop out of high school and receive psychological help.

“Many people were saying single-parent families are just different, not necessarily worse or better, and the factors that link kids to problems have to do with poverty,” Zill said. “But my research didn’t support that explanation.”

Changes Apparent

Amy Alt is well aware of these studies, and they frighten her.

Already, she can see changes in her boys. Tony, the 6-year-old, is angry. Andy, the 4-year-old, has wondered aloud if the divorce is his fault. “Maybe if we’re really good,” he said not long ago, “we can get dad to come back.” David, the 2-year-old, seems too little to understand. His 31-year-old mother wonders what the future holds.

“I don’t know what all this means yet,” she said. “It kind of bugs me now that my kids are just statistics. . . . I feel like they’re not going to be who they were going to be. Something’s been taken away and they’re never going to be the same.”

Steve Alt is worried too, though not enough, he says, to go back home.

“I really do feel that people growing up in broken homes do take on sort of a disadvantage,” he said, “and I really want to work hard to avoid putting our kids through that.” This is a sentiment most Americans share; a recent Los Angeles Times Poll found that 69% of respondents say they believe that it is best for children to grow up in a two-parent home.

There was no one turning point, no singular event that prompted Steve Alt to leave. It was not another woman, he insisted--although he does have a girlfriend now. Rather, as in so many marriages gone awry, it was a slow process of growing apart. At 32, the father of three felt his wife lavished her attention on the kids, ignoring him.

Counseling only convinced him that he should get out. “One of the first questions he [the counselor] asked was, ‘What do you two enjoy doing together?’ It was like, dead silence for probably a full minute. We could not think of a single thing.”

As to his sons, Steve Alt subscribes to the notion that helped fuel America’s divorce revolution in the first place--that it will be better for them to live apart from their dad than to see him trapped in “a loveless marriage.”

Not necessarily, Zill said. While excessive marital conflict is hard on children, Zill added: “In many cases, even though the parents may not be getting along great, it’s not so bad for the children. For many children, the troubles begin when the parents decide to get divorced.”

Ushered In by Reagan

A skyrocketing divorce rate is not what the creators of no-fault had in mind when they liberalized the nation’s divorce laws. Indeed, the man who ushered in the no-fault era could hardly be described as a liberal on the topic of family values: none other than former President Reagan.

As governor of California, Reagan--whose first marriage ended in divorce--signed the first no-fault law into effect on Sept. 5, 1969. Other states soon followed suit. Some, like New York, were strict, requiring long waiting periods before a divorce and employing no-fault only when both spouses agreed. Others, like Michigan, permitted divorce when either party wanted out, requiring only a six-month waiting period. By 1985, every state had some form of no-fault divorce on its books.

The promise of no-fault--a phrase borrowed from the automobile insurance industry--was that it would make divorce kinder and gentler. “It is a step,” Reagan said back in 1969, “toward removing the acrimony and bitterness between a couple that is harmful not only to their children, but also to society as a whole.”

Whether it delivered on that promise is a matter of dispute. As Steve and Amy Alt can testify, divorce is a wrenching emotional event--no matter what the laws say. “I pictured this nice divorce where we could talk about things,” Steve Alt said. “It’s getting uglier every day.”

Also in dispute is whether no-fault was responsible for fueling the explosion of divorce in America. A recent University of Oklahoma study published in the Journal of Marriage and the Family found that no-fault raised divorce rates in 44 states, accounting for a 17% rise in the national rate.

But Zill and other scholars called the Oklahoma study unsound. The divorce rate, they said, was going up anyway and was attributable to other factors, including the financial independence of women who no longer needed to stay in bad marriages.

Either way, Americans clearly hold different views of marriage today than they did 30 years ago. “We have given up on the ideal of marital permanence,” said University of Texas sociologist Norval Glenn, whose research indicates that not only are more Americans divorcing, but they also are unhappier in marriage. “Without this ideal, people go into marriage tentatively. They don’t think it’s forever.”

A Beaming Couple

On Aug. 21, 1987, Steve and Amy Alt did think it was forever. The photographs from that day are like wedding photos everywhere: a beaming young couple, she in lace and pearls and a flowing train, he in white tux and bucks. Proud parents. A crowded church.

They had been dating for a couple of years when he popped the question. “It was Valentine’s Day,” Amy Alt recalled, “and I’d love to say it was at some romantic place, but it was in the parking lot at Long John Silver’s.”

“We knew what we were doing,” she continued. “We just didn’t say, ‘We’re head over heels, let’s get married.’ I married him because I knew I could stay married to him. We knew what we wanted, we set goals.”

Steve Alt said he did it because it was the thing to do. “There comes a point,” he said, “you either get married or you break up.” Back then, he said, he thought he and Amy had a lot going for them. They both came from stable families. They were financially well set. “I thought we had a better chance than many,” he said.

Now, looking back, he thinks he made a big mistake. “I wasn’t ready. I never loved her,” he said.

“She thinks, and in some ways I agree with her, that we made a commitment to each other, that I’m breaking that commitment and that’s just the worst thing you can do,” he continued. “But I know people who have been married for many years and have been miserable for many years too, and I just could not do that. It was worth the risk for me to get out of it.”

No-Fault Legacy

This, the divorce reformers say, is the sorry legacy of no-fault--the now-common belief that personal happiness comes before duty in a marriage.

“There is more to marriage than love and personal satisfaction,” said Michigan state Rep. Jessie Dalman. “There is also commitment to take care of your spouse, as well as any children that come from the marriage. I think that has been lost since no-fault.”

In the summer of 1994, Dalman got a chance to peer into the lives of a lot of people like Steve and Amy Alt, and what she saw troubled her.

At 62, the Republican legislator has been married 38 years. She is no stranger to divorce; she has watched the struggles of her own sister-in-law, who divorced many years ago. But it was not until she attended a public hearing conducted by Friend of the Court, the state agency responsible for enforcing divorce decrees, that Dalman began thinking about marriage as a public policy matter. Dozens of divorced men and women testified.

“I could hear the unhappiness and the anger behind the whole aspect of divorce,” she recalled. “That’s what led me to think we ought to go back to square one and see what has happened here.”

She began reading up on the children of divorce. She held five public hearings around the state. And then in February, Dalman did something that just a few years ago would have been unthinkable: She introduced legislation seeking, essentially, to repeal Michigan’s 1972 no-fault law.

The response was immediate, and stunning. Lawmakers in Iowa, Pennsylvania, Idaho and Georgia quickly followed Dalman’s lead, and grass-roots divorce reform movements are now springing up in other states, including California.

In Michigan, Dalman proposed a 13-bill package that aims to change the way people think about both divorce and marriage. It requires premarital and pre-divorce counseling. No-fault divorce would not be completely eliminated, but would be permitted only when both parties seek the split. Parents obtaining no-fault divorces would be required to take classes dealing with the effects on their children.

In all other cases, the spouse wanting the divorce would have to prove fault. Among the grounds: adultery, physical incompetence, two years of desertion, three years of imprisonment, drug or alcohol abuse, mental or physical abuse.

Although Gov. John Engler has pledged to sign the bill if it passes, Dalman acknowledged she faces an uphill battle. Her foes, including Michigan’s family law bar and the local chapter of the National Organization for Women, say the reforms could trap battered women in abusive marriages. Critics in social science circles, including Zill, say reintroducing fault would simply make a painful event even more painful.

And the idea might not sell with the public; the Times Poll found that just 42% of respondents say they think that divorces should be tougher to get, while 44% think the laws should stay the same, and another 8% think it should be easier to get divorced.

Reform proponents say the switch would send an important message to society. “Marriage is a contract that needs to be honored,” Dalman said, “and, quite frankly, it needs to be enforced.”

If the new law were in place now, Steve Alt would have no grounds for divorce; in theory, he might have to stay married. As a practical matter, of course, that is unlikely; laws cannot repair broken relationships. But what the law can do, Dalman and others say, is give faithful spouses like Amy Alt more power at the bargaining table.

“Right now, under present law, the husband automatically gets the divorce he wants,” said Randy Hekman, executive director of the Michigan Family Forum, a policy group that is pushing Dalman’s bill. “All things being equal, he’ll get 50% of the property. She has no clout. The husband has a trump card: He can say, ‘Don’t push me too hard or I’m going to go for custody of the kids.’ Under the new law, he has to come to her hat in hand. And he’ll have to pay through the nose in some instances, which is as it should be.”

Money Matters

In the end, sadly, this is what Steve and Amy Alt’s eight-year union will likely come down to: a dispute over money. She wants him to pay more child support; her $17,000-a-year secretary’s salary, Amy said, barely covers day care. He complains that he is giving her too much already--$150 a week, plus part of his quarterly bonuses and the payments on her van.

If Dalman’s bill passes, it will likely be too late for Amy Alt. A year from now, Alt vs. Alt will be closed, one more divorce for America’s record books.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Voices

‘I think it should be harder to get married. People ought to think about it before getting married so they don’t jump into it. . . . I was married to my husband for 24 years and I got divorced, but I waited until my youngest was 18. I thought it was better to keep the children together, to have a mother and father.”

--Aileen Browne, 70, homemaker, Hollansburg, Ohio

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‘The institution of marriage has really been downgraded. Being married anymore actually means nothing. There’s no bond there. If the rules and regulations, the laws, were more stiff I think it would push people to work together, to work out their problems.”

--George Hoiland, 47, heavy-equipment operator in Priest River, Idaho

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‘We live in a culture where the tendency is to demonize bad marriages and idealize divorce. We use phrases like, ‘when divorce happens’ or ‘when the marriage ends.’ But in about 80% of divorces one person decides to leave the other person. . . . It’s very important for the law to have a little more concern and sympathy for the person who does not want to leave.”

--Maggie Gallagher, author, “The Abolition of Marriage: How We Destroy Lasting Love”

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‘Some wives that are abused, they’re so afraid of getting a divorce because they think their husband is going to hunt them down and kill them. If you want to get it done, you should be able to get it done. Why do you have to go into a court and ask for a divorce?”

--Yvette Mercado, 30, worker with the mentally disabled, Brooklyn, N.Y.

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‘Restoring fault-based divorce is not going to change the divorce rate very much. . . . I understand people who want to use it as a symbolic statement of support for marriage, but I am concerned that it will cause more problems for children. . . .”

--Andrew Cherlin, sociologist, Johns Hopkins University

Trends in Divorce

Although the United States divorce rate has leveled off in recent years, it is still higher than in any other nation. The rate spiked after World War II (many divorces were postponed until soldiers came home), and reached an all-time high in the late 1970s and early 80s. This chart tracks the divorce rate within the total population and among married women, which is an estimate for married couples.

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Married women Total 15 and Year population older 1940 2.0 8.8 1946 4.3 17.9 1951 2.5 9.9 1957 2.2 9.2 1965 2.5 10.6 1970 3.5 14.9 1975 4.8 20.3 1979 5.3 22.8 1981 5.3 22.6 1985 5.0 21.7 1990 4.7 20.9 1993 4.6 20.5 1994* 4.6 20.5

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*Most recent available

Source: National Center for Health Statistics