No-Fault Divorce at Fault for Divorce Increase

Between 1960 and 1980, most states adopted some version of no-fault divorce - and the U.S. divorce rate roughly doubled. As Maggie Gallagher, president of the Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, concludes in a new report, the connection is no coincidence. Gallagher examined all the empirical research since 1995 that looked at the impact of no-fault divorce laws on divorce rates. She found that 17 of 24 recent empirical studies find that the introduction of no-fault divorce laws increased the divorce rate. Most studies estimate no-fault divorce increased divorce rates on the order of 5 to 30 percent. Gallagher also notes that couples respond to the increased divorce risk from no-fault divorce law by delaying or forgoing marriages altogether. This might be considered a positive outcome if unilateral divorce merely discouraged divorce-prone couples from marrying. But the real result is that couples are choosing to cohabitate and have children out of wedlock rather than enter into a union that can be so easily broken. As Gallagher concludes, "The premise of many family law scholars--that legal change is only a response to underlying cultural shifts and never an independent cause--is difficult to reconcile with either economic theory or existing empirical research. Changing divorce law can affect the divorce rate, and likely the rate of unmarried childbearing and cohabitation as well."