The History of Divorce: From Fault to No-Fault Divorce Proceedings

Today I'm going to give you a short history lesson on divorce.

Now, I know that's not typically what you think of but, there is a history to divorce. And in the United States, divorce started in 1629 at the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

Back then, as you can imagine, they were pretty worried about even surviving the next week, but you could get divorced basically under only one circumstance and that is if you could not have children.

If the marriage was not successful in having offspring, that was the only reason that you could get divorced. Now, obviously, things have changed. And the big change started around 1776, when divorce started to become a little less restrictive. It was still very uncommon, but you could get divorced if the spouse was abusive or a drunkard back then. And again, of course, if you couldn't have children.

It wasn't until the 20th century when things really started to get interesting and change. That's when they started to have what's called divorce mills.

States would say could come here and get divorced for any reason. So what happened was the other states, they, I guess, were missing out on revenue. So what they said was, "You know what, we're going to have no-fault divorces," which means that you can get divorced if it's no one's fault.

Even though your husband cheated on you or did this or that, it doesn't matter. You could just come in and say I want a divorce and we'll give a divorce. And that's kind of where we are right now in the state of divorces.

If you have any questions about the history of divorce, feel free to give me an email.