Recently Passed New Jersey Senate Bill 959

Throughout this past year, following the Kavanaugh Commission in 1994, to "study" divorce in New Jersey, New Jerseyites are being told, with media compliance, that they are "getting a no-fault divorce law for the first time." This has been a blatant, deliberate falsehood. Only now, with the potential assertion that the media and the Assembly obstructed the "public’s right to know" are you hearing an occasional small announcement of the pending law and the actual history of no-fault in the Garden State. New Jersey has had a no-fault law for 20 years; it is called "living separate and apart", for a period of 18 months. Then a divorce can be final. Notice that there is NO fault charge there, such as cruelty, adultery, or desertion, in that law. If all one has to do is "separate" [read, Desert] and file the papers, and the outcome is guaranteed, that IS No-fault. When lawyers and legislators began the divorce revolution over 20 years ago, it was decided that a distortion in language could be used in most states to conceal the fault count of Malicious Desertion (abandonment of a spouse without cause), just by re-naming it "Living Separate and Apart." and let it work as the justification for a No-fault divorce.... and also the way to shield a deserting spouse from any legal penalty. So New Jersey has had no-fault for a long time. With Bill 959, by adding "Irreconcilable Differences" they are substituting those two words for "Living Separate" and what is clever, is that no one even has to separate or move out in expressing an intention to divorce. He or she can even remain in the marital bed (!) while the NEW brief waiting period goes by. That, of course, will be a mere six months, as #959 passed the Senate and now awaits Governor Whitman’s veto, or signing. It could happen this month if residents do not assert, and speedily, their right to be heard.

What will happen if it does pass? It is firmly established in divorce research [American Economic Review, June, 1998] that lowering the waiting period in any divorce law, serves to only raise the divorce rate in that state. In a nation with a calamitous rate of divorce with its clearly harmful results upon the larger community, we reputedly do NOT want any law that would raise the number of divorces. And who will that affect the most? A new report tells us that wives between ages 50-54 can expect over 1/3 of their first marriages to end in divorce. At that age, a first marriage is most probably a long one. With this bill, a powerful new incentive to dispose of a mature wife, will be law. The law will make the wait less onerous, and not having to separate will certainly lower the costs, which have acted as a disincentive to divorce. And a young husband with an adulterous wife, will find that his best tools to stir her to counseling, are lost to him forever.

Citizens of the Garden State are advised to look hard at who....what groups.....have pressed for this change in their divorce statutes, and then to call the offices of the Governor. Obviously, if the goal is to increase divorces because it is so profitable, the arrow points to the matrimonial bar. The sponsors in the Assembly were Bateman and Cohen, both attorneys. The Senate committee chair which passed the bill out in September, is James Cafiero, a lawyer. Indeed, as the Senate bill originally specified a 12 month wait, he might be asked how it was still lowered to a mere 6 months in committee. And now the decision to post the bill for a vote on January 12th was solely done by Senate President Donald DiFrancesco, also a lawyer, a father of daughters, and a man with gubernatorial ambitions. Who else has been working behind the scenes to pass this malice? New Jersey has a list of men’s groups who have been pushing these legislators for their advantage in divorce since the early 90s. Having succeeded in gathering up women’s property using subtly advantageous divorce laws, they have now taken aim at winning easy custody of their children .....regardless of the facts of marital misconduct. When you make a wife poor from divorce, it is much easier to make the case that her financial condition makes her a less desirable parent! And it is happening. When men do seek custody of the children, they DO win most cases. If you are a young mother, you are urged to pay attention.

But once again, we have to worry about the major effect of increasing divorces, as will happen if this passes. Proof? The internet reports that divorces in New York are UP, and it’s precisely due to the passage of a shorter waiting period. Remember, the Number 1 causal factor of our homicide rates is the divorce rates. Divorces UP = your Homicides go UP. Protecting our children means, at the very least, that we remove them from harms way. But as Jonesboro’s massacre showed us, a state with a high divorce rate [Arkansas] pays, eventually, a frightful price. Almost as depressing is new research from a scholarly Texas institute, on the effect of what is going on in divorce law passage as it impacts on MARRIED ... we are not talking divorced here ... working women. When wives return home from their 40 hour plus/per week job, a new study shows that they are adding more work on themselves at home, unconsciously trying to stave off the impoverishment and loss of their children that the ever-present threat of divorce is facing them. What will follow such constant stress will be a decline in the life expectancy of New Jersey married wives and mothers. One might look at this finding as showing a type of enslavement by statute, a fully knowing subjugation of married female citizens by the legislators; loosen up divorce laws and watch women work yet longer and harder and without fair compensation at divorce.

This is a Republican-majority legislature currently in New Jersey. It is no wonder that in the 1996 national election, even married Catholic women, regarded as solidly pro-family, voted mainly Democratic.

The options for a solution now are varied. The bill should have never passed the Assembly in June and sponsor Bateman could work out a compromise with the Governor. He too should receive constituent calls. The legislators, all of them in Trenton who voted, especially, in the Senate for the bill, need to be informed that passage will have political consequences for them personally. Perhaps it could be amended to raise the wait back up to a minimum of one year; but complete defeat is the only true moral option. A fact is that any divorce can never be denied, but a shocked abandoned spouse, whether man or woman, desperately needs time to gather all their own resources. Each citizen must give some thought to whether they think it’s fair being allowed to announce for certain divorce without ever having to separate. To Protecting Marriage, Inc. , it has a slightly obscene quality to it. As one television host has noted, this bill is the closest anywhere in the nation, to the old Islam divorce method of simply declaring "I divorce you. I divorce you. I divorce you."

New Jersey residents know that there are many other ways to ease divorce, IF that is their objective. Surely good citizens don’t want to increase divorces so that attorneys can increase their standard of living. Perhaps they have a stronger desire to stabilize marriage in their state. It is time to take a stand. Many professionals are implementing methods that will make marriages more durable. However, Shortening waiting periods is a favorite fallacious argument by the Domestic Violence lobby, who know - but rarely tell - that the state MUST provide protection and shelter immediately to each abuse victim. Research consistently shows that an abused wife actually INCREASES her chance of being murdered, when she files for divorce. The solution for spousal abuse lies outside divorce laws, and they know that, too. But it is a part of the Divorce industry. Easy sounding divorce bills should always be held up to the light. And this one, Senate 959/Assembly 138, needs now to be stopped first, and debated again, later.

And New Jersey citizens have a responsibility also.; their state permits a Governor a conditional veto. NO society can claim a true and sincere concern for it’s children until it presses and enacts new statutes that are disincentives for divorce.

This new almost-passed law in New Jersey is transparent Wife-disposal, the the sponsoring lawmakers have knowingly exploited the citizens’ ignorance of meaning of statute wording.

Other states might look at New Jersey’s situation as one to watch out for, as it is certain from other reports, that this bill is a "trial balloon" for expansion elsewhere. In states such as New York and Maryland, the same malice is now law. A clear moral stance of the national Fatherhood groups is also overdue on this issue.