Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Foreword, by Mary Ann Glendon
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- PART ONE FAULT
- PART TWO CUSTODY
- PART THREE CHILD SUPPORT
- PART FOUR PROPERTY DIVISION
- PART FIVE SPOUSAL SUPPORT
- 11 Back to the Future: The Perils and Promise of a Backward-Looking Jurisprudence
- 12 Money as Emotion in the Distribution of Wealth at Divorce
- 13 Postmodern Marriage as Seen through the Lens of the ALI's “Compensatory Payments”
- PART SIX DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIP
- PART SEVEN AGREEMENTS
- PART EIGHT JUDICIAL AND LEGISLATIVE PERSPECTIVES
- PART NINE INTERNATIONAL REFLECTIONS
- Afterword: Elite Principles: The ALI Proposals and the Politics of Law Reform, by Carl E. Schneider
- Index
13 - Postmodern Marriage as Seen through the Lens of the ALI's “Compensatory Payments”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgments
- Foreword, by Mary Ann Glendon
- List of Contributors
- Introduction
- PART ONE FAULT
- PART TWO CUSTODY
- PART THREE CHILD SUPPORT
- PART FOUR PROPERTY DIVISION
- PART FIVE SPOUSAL SUPPORT
- 11 Back to the Future: The Perils and Promise of a Backward-Looking Jurisprudence
- 12 Money as Emotion in the Distribution of Wealth at Divorce
- 13 Postmodern Marriage as Seen through the Lens of the ALI's “Compensatory Payments”
- PART SIX DOMESTIC PARTNERSHIP
- PART SEVEN AGREEMENTS
- PART EIGHT JUDICIAL AND LEGISLATIVE PERSPECTIVES
- PART NINE INTERNATIONAL REFLECTIONS
- Afterword: Elite Principles: The ALI Proposals and the Politics of Law Reform, by Carl E. Schneider
- Index
Summary
The “no-fault” divorce revolution, begun in the late 1960s, stalled in many states in the United States with the stubborn persistence of fault as a factor in alimony awards and the division of marital property after divorce. In the Introduction to the Principles, the drafters assert that “American law is sharply divided on the question of whether ‘marital misconduct’ should be considered in allocating marital property or awarding alimony.” During the 1970s, many states not only retained fault for purposes of the financial incidents of divorce but also combined a new no-fault ground for divorce with existing fault grounds. Thus, divorce law of many states, as well as the law governing ancillary matters, remains “mixed,” with both fault and no-fault grounds for divorce, and fault taken into consideration as a factor in alimony or property awards or both.
As a means of completing the stalled no-fault revolution, achieving unity among state laws that was not accomplished by the Uniform Marriage and Dissolution Act (“UMDA”), and providing a coherent theory justifying awards to a spouse after divorce, the Principles propose a set of provisions that would compensate a spouse for certain losses attributable to the marriage and its termination. Loss would substitute for the almost universal criterion today of need, and fault would be eliminated almost entirely from consideration in the Principles.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Reconceiving the FamilyCritique on the American Law Institute's Principles of the Law of Family Dissolution, pp. 249 - 268Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006