Family Relations & Psychologists, Sociologists, and Marriage Counselors
Marriage may be difficult, but divorce is difficult too. Married people often feel trapped, for divorce is frightening, painful, expensive, and subject to social disapproval, and it is one of the few important institutions in our culture for which there is no formal ritual. Birth, marriage, death, all have formal cultural rituals associated with them-divorce does not. Furthermore, there is evidence that even when divorce is feasible, it is not always the ideal solution for marital difficulties. Among white people, those who have been divorced have the highest suicide rate, and there are often emotional problems in children whose parents have experienced divorce or desertion. Most divorced people can’t stand loneliness-they try promiscuity and booze, and become more despairing; then they try remarriage, and here the divorce rate is still high, though some do better in the second marriage than they did in the first. When a person moves on into second, third, fourth, and fifth marriages, the chance that he will succeed becomes increasingly small. We end up saying that marriage is hard to live with and hard to live without.
On February 1, 1966, the state of California began a massive attempt to gather information on the background of divorces, in order to provide data for professionals trying to develop ways to lower the incredible divorce rate. Each of the major counties in California had over a thousand divorces in 1965, and San Mateo County reached seventy divorces for every one hundred marriages.
In California all lawsuits for divorce, annulment, and separate maintenance now are to be accompanied by a comprehensive questionnaire completed by both the husband and the wife. The state hopes to find out what factors are particularly important in divorce. Religious differences, ages of the spouses, race, and finances, and so on, will be examined.
The resulting statistics may also have other uses. In January, 1966, in San Francisco, a young widow and her son sued the city for $500,000 in damages because her husband of one month had been killed in a traffic accident on the city’s streetcar system. However, the city called in an expert from the University of California. He examined the case, considering such factors as the different religions of husband and wife, the fact that the girl was pregnant before/marriage, and the fact that both she and her husband were teenagers and that both had been raised in Marin County, where the divorce rate is exceedingly high, and concluded that the marriage would probably have been doomed even if the man had lived. The jury, deciding that the expert knew at least something about the matter, awarded the widow $145,000 instead of $500,000.
There soon may be a constitutional proposal in California for the creation of a State Department of Family Relations. This amendment, generally known as the Sitton-Winterfeld Initiative, is backed by a number of people throughout the state who feel that the present divorce procedures are terribly unfair and create more dissension among divorced people than is necessary. In particular, opponents of the existing divorce laws object strenuously to the adversary system, in which one of the separating mates, usually the husband, must be found guilty of some degree of cruelty-"extreme," "mental," or whatever-before a divorce can be granted. (Desertion and adultery are also grounds for divorce in California, but are rarely used.) The resulting courtroom confrontations produce perjured testimony and lasting bitterness that forever precludes reconciliation and leaves the children caught between two parents, who remain bitter and antagonistic even though divorced and living apart.
The backers (largely male) of this bill are also concerned about the monetary considerations involved. In particular, they feel that citizens are at the mercy of avaricious lawyers who provide quick divorces for couples with limited financial resources, but manage to introduce long, complicated procedures, with correspondingly large fees, when their clients are wealthy. They feel that the child-support payments in general are fair, but that provisions for the settlement of the estate and for alimony are way out of line.
The proposed State Department of Family Relations would have a governing board of six elected directors and regional boards in family-relation centers which could establish educational programs in family-relations matters. The department would have exclusive jurisdiction, subject to an appellate-court review, over divorce, annulment, and separate-maintenance proceedings. Parties could be represented by agents who were not attorneys. Divorces would be granted without regard to "guilt," and they would be effective immediately; the current one-year interlocutory decree would be abolished. Alimony and support payments would be based on the ability to pay and on need.
The sponsors of the measure say the plan would work as follows:
The plan operates on a local basis in the county with a board of three county directors. These will be psychologists, sociologists, marriage counselors so they will have related educational backgrounds with experience in human relations.
A staff of referees-investigators, accountants, social workers and other specialists will handle individual cases. The emphasis at this level is on premarital and post-marital education and direct aid in altering problems.
