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CajunRick
Network Helper
| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Houma, Louisiana USA |
| Posts: | 4981 |
| First Name: | Rick (& Kermie) | | Gender: | Male | | Faith History: | Lifetime Catholic, Latin Rite |
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Posted: Sat Nov 24th, 2007 10:40 am |
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Evansville, IN, Nov 23, 2007 / 10:59 am (CNA).- A reform of marriage laws and better marital counseling programs have been proposed as ways to lower the divorce rate and improve the quality of marriages.
Michael McManus, president of Marriage Savers, has been advocating a "Community Marriage Policy"(CMP) to help create lasting marriages. The policy, which helps churches prepare, enrich, or restore marriage has been implemented in 220 cities.
The Catholic Bishop of Evansville Gerald Gettelfinger has thanked Marriage Savers in a letter for helping his area cut divorce rates by twenty percent while raising marriage rates sixteen percent.
A study comparing cities and counties that had instituted a Community Marriage Policy with cities and counties that had not instituted the policy indicated CMP localities had a larger drop in their divorce rate.
Paul Birch and Stan Weed of the Institute for Research and Evaluation compared the divorce rate of the first 114 CMP counties to the rate in similar counties without the policy. While the divorce rate fell by 9.4 percent in the non-policy counties, counties that had enacted the Community Marriage Policy fell 17.5 percent over the same seven-year period. Birch and Weed estimated that between 31,000 and 50,000 marriages were preserved in the CMP counties.
Between 1990 and 2000, cohabitation rates also fell 13.4 percent in CMP localities, while they rose by 19.2 percent in counties without the policy.
In a proposal to the National Association of Evangelicals, Michael McManus has suggested three policy changes that could supplement and spread the beneficial effects of the Community Marriage Policy.
One proposal is to mandate that states spend between two and five percent of their welfare reform surplus on so-called "Health Marriage Initiatives," which could include instituting CMPs in a state.
McManus also proposes replacing no-fault divorce laws with mutual consent laws. "What was entered into by two people willingly should not be terminated by one person who alleges the couple is incompatible," he wrote in a letter to Catholic News Agency. He suggested there are constitutional problems with no-fault divorce, since the proceedings always result in a judgment favorable to the spouse who started the divorce proceedings. This could violate the guarantee of due process in the Fifth Amendment.
A change of child custody laws could also help children after a divorce or strengthen spouses' desire to preserve their marriage. Sole custody, the legal arrangement in which guardianship of children is awarded only to one parent after a divorce, could be changed to favor joint custody or shared parenting arrangements.
McManus' proposal, he claims, could slash divorce rates by fifty percent. "That would be enough to save 500,000 marriages a year from divorce, and enable 500,000 kids a year to avoid the turmoil of a parental divorce, or 5 million in a decade," McManus said.
Marriage reform could be implemented through state legislatures, but McManus was not optimistic about that route. Legislatures have an overrepresentation of lawyers, some of whom are divorce attorneys. This provides a strong disincentive for them to block the reform of divorce laws.
Change on the federal level could better implement marriage reform. Congress could require states to spend some welfare dollars on marriage initiatives. The constitutional question of possible due process violations could also provide congress authority to intervene.
But McManus sees marriage reform as potentially a strong issue for a Republican presidential candidate. "It would give him a fresh issue to champion to awaken his base," he said.
The National Association of Evangelicals will revisit the Marriage Savers' proposal at its meeting in March.
The above article is reposted with permission from Catholic News Agency.
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Understanding is the reward of faith. Therefore seek not to understand that you may believe, but believe that you may understand. - Augustine
Rick Luquette
Luquette Lane
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mrsbmoo
Member
| Joined: | Fri Sep 29th, 2006 |
| Location: | Virginia USA |
| Posts: | 267 |
| First Name: | Becky | | Gender: | Female | | Faith History: | former Methodist. RCA, Presbyterian, Holiness, Wesleyan... Catholic as of June ... |
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Posted: Tue Nov 27th, 2007 09:37 pm |
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While I am no fan of divorce, I know in my case I would not be in favor of this. It would have only delayed my divorce and given my ex even more power over me.
My husband was living with another woman and she was pregnant. She was also married, to a man in the Navy, who was at sea at the time. The child was born before either had ended their previous marriage. Until my divorce became final which took a year, I was responsible for any medical and living expenses my husband ran up. Meaning if he went to the hospital I could have been forced to pay the bill, or if he signed a lease and then didn't pay, I could have had to pay his rent. Her husband could have been held responsible for her childbirth hospital bill even though the child wasn't his. I filed for divorce to try to protect myself from this kind of thing. Fault was no issue, I could have proved adultery but didn't to save his parents and mine from having it published in the paper that we were divorced due to adultery. I was getting enough flack from my evangelical church, every woman there acted like I was dangerous to their marriage because my husband left me( there must have been something wrong with me or lacking about my treatment of him or he wouldn't have done that), I didn't need my shame published in the paper for comment by anyone who vaguely knew me.
We went to counseling at one point before the divorce but it was ridiculous and consisted of the counselor asking my husband if he wanted to continue the marriage and what would I have to do for him to get him to stay in the marriage. He answered I don't know to the first and had no answer for the second. His girlffriend was not even considered an issue in the marriage. Of course I was paying the $45 out of pocket expense to go.
Shared custody is a nightmare. I actually had sole custody at first and my ex sued for shared custody. I should have fought him harder. It meant he had much more control about what I did in my own home. I am in favor of the old way where the ex-husband just disappeares from the lives of the family he left instead of trying to interfere in the life of the ex-wife through his joint custody of the kids. I haven't had a Christmas morning with my kids in 5 years. He does everything he can to turn the girls against the Catholic Church and somewhat against me too. My ex tells me how to keep my house, and what I can do with the child support. He is very polite if my husband is there but if I am alone he will walk into my house as if he lives there. He claims he has the right to because his kids live there. My only comfort has been that as the girls get older they have refused visitation more and more to the point they now only go on most Sunday afternoons.
Yes, I still harbor too much bitterness over the whole thing and I know I am hurting myself with it. In the past year he has gotten a bit better, seemingly linked to him going to church more regularly(a Baptist church). Still, I wouldn't have wanted to prolong the divorce any further, 4 years of him leaving and returning and leaving again plus a year of waiting to file for divorce was long enough.
(In VA, if you have kids you must be separated for a full year before you can file for divorce, if you have any assets, it can take another year to settle them and get a divorce decree. Luckily, we were broke and it only took a couple months after filing)
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Becky
Wife of Michael(called Moo) and stay at home mom to 5 daughters between 7 months and 16
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