Why It Could Get a Lot Harder to Get Divorced in Some States

As the great same-sex marriage
debate bumbles on, a smaller, quieter marriage battle is taking
place in state legislatures. Last week, The Washington
Post reported on moves by socially conservative politicians
around the country to
make it harder for couples to get divorced.

Since 2011, more than a dozen states have considered bills that
would limit allowable reasons for divorce and/or draw out divorce
proceedings (via longer waiting periods and mandated
counseling).

Wait, you need a reason to get divorced? Didn’t we do
away with that in the ’70s? 

Yes, mostly: “No-fault” divorce laws—which permit couples to
divorce without proof of adultery, abandonment, etc.—began to
proliferate after California passed the first one in 1969 (signed
by the Gipper himself). By 1980, 45 other states had joined
California and by 1985, New York was the only outlier, the
Post reports.

Despite the fact that it’s driven up the divorce rate, no-fault
divorce is generally looked at as a pretty positive development in
America. It frees people from being trapped in miserable marriages,
for one. And studies have suggested it has helped cut down on
domestic abuse and spousal murder.

Returning to the old ways might force more people to stay
unhappily married, but that’s a pretty bizarre goal. Putting
alleged “social good” above individual freedom and flourishing
rarely seems to lead to either.

Leave it to legislators, however, to think they know better
about your love life than you do. Kansas and Oklahoma are currently
considering an end to no-fault divorce for parents or possibly
everybody. North Carolina wants to institute a two-year waiting
period. 

At Bloomberg View, Megan
McArdle uses European labor markets to explain why such laws
could totally backfire.

After World War II, many left-wing European
governments… passed laws making it very, very difficult to
fire workers. In Italy, for example, a judge could reverse a layoff
decision, not because you’d fired the worker unjustly, but because
the judge didn’t think you needed to cut staff. Hurrah! Finally,
workers were protected from the dark specter of unemployment!

Well, not quite. Workers were thrilled; employers were
terrified. Now hiring a worker meant you were stuck with them
unless they committed some absolutely flagrant offense—like, say,
emptying the till and running out the door.

That’s a hell of a commitment to make to someone you barely
know. So employers didn’t want to hire scary strangers; they wanted
to hire close friends and family. Or, better yet, no one at all.
Youth unemployment in many of these nations was staggering. The
insiders had a great deal, but people without jobs found themselves
consigned to a series of temporary, not-very-well-paid contracts.
Or the dole.

The lessons? When you make contracts harder to exit, you also
make it less likely people will want to enter into them. And
promoting social arrangements via government force rarely works out
the way social planners want it to.