Once upon a time, not so long ago, when a bride and groom stood at the altar and repeated the vow “Until death do us part,” they meant it as a lifelong, unbreakable commitment. Divorce laws of the past reflected the vow's black-and-white meaning, and there were enormous social pressures to stay married. Now, for many, this notion of permanence seems quaint. Notwithstanding the historical inequities of traditional marriage and property laws that harmed women and children and required reform, it's time to acknowledge the unforeseen costs that came when the definition of marriage was transformed from a permanent to an impermanent union.

Increasingly, the idea of divorce (or the contemplation of divorce as an option) functions as the solution for personal unhappiness within marriage. It's also fair to say that divorce as an idea serves as a rationalization used by an unhappy spouse who chooses to give up on the commitment they made at the altar. Arguably, this revised concept of marriage as inherently impermanent, and the use of divorce as a solution for all things that go wrong in the marriage relationship, inflicts a sizeable amount of harm on the husband and wife and, especially, on the children who must face the real, lifelong consequences of the dissolution of the family they hold dear.

Fault and No-Fault

During the 1970s, divorce, and by extension the institution of marriage, went through a major transformation with the introduction of the legal concepts of no-fault divorce and community property. Prior to this time, fraud had to be publicly proven in a court of law in front of a judge who would then decide who was “at fault” in the marriage and whether or not to grant the divorce. He could then award custody and make financial dispensation of any and all marital assets. This system of divorce was costly and it produced shame, embarrassment, and often the public ridicule of an entire family. The burden of proving marital fraud in a courtroom became so acrimonious that these contested divorces tore many families irreparably asunder.

No-fault divorce allows two people to dissolve a marriage without any evidence of fraud, with the most common, often perfunctory legal reason for divorce now given as irreconcilable differences. In most states, after the impersonal processing of a few official documents, each divorced spouse walks away with half of the marital assets and her independence. At first this approach seemed humane as it reduced the disastrous affects associated with the public humiliation of divorce trials. However, it produced other challenging ramifications.

What now appears clear is that after divorce became legally easier and more socially acceptable many people didn't include the idea of “till death do us a part” in their thinking about the marriage vow. They may have said the same words, but either didn't take them seriously or didn't think through their implications, leaving millions of husbands and wives psychologically unprepared for the difficult times all marriages bring.

It seems that at least half of those who stood at the altar and spoke the words “Until death do us part” meant instead, “Until this gets too hard,” or “until I get bored with you and someone better comes along.” This is not to say that the millions of people who married and divorced over the past three decades were being dishonest or deceptive while going through with those marriages and subsequent divorces. What is far more likely is that with the help of the larger culture many were deceiving themselves.