Tag Archives: morality

10 Lies that Keep Unconstitutional Divorce Laws Propped-Up in State Legislatures

US Const

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, and counterpart clauses in each state constitution guarantee the right to the free exercise of religion for both spouses by stating that Congress / state legislatures may make no law that establishes a state religion or prohibits the free exercise thereof.  This free exercise is far more than belief, worship or expression – it is the right to act upon conviction,  make life decisions according to those convictions and do so without losing other constitutional protections,  such as the 14th Amendment which protects property from seizure without due process and guarantees equal protection under the laws. Additionally, the Federal and state versions of the Religious Freedom Restoration Acts (RFRA) passed in the 1990’s require government authorities to prove a “compelling” government interest in enforcing laws against individuals claiming a religious objection, and to use the least restrictive means to enforce the law if the first burden of proof is met by that governing authority.   For example, states that create immoral incentives rewarding the unilateral dissolution of marriage by petitioners who are adulterers, homosexuals, addicts, etc., by providing that marital misconduct not be considered in dividing the marital property or in child custody decisions are probably violating RFRA, as well as the 14th Amendment

This is very important to followers of Christ who believe several things about both marriage and divorce that directly conflict with U.S. divorce laws. It is also important because followers of Christ believe they must obey God first in all things if what He commands about the order of society (“What God has joined let man not separate”) stands in conflict with civil laws.   A follower of Christ who believes it is a violation of God’s law to file a divorce petition even when they know their spouse is engaged in various acts destructive to the marriage will often be discriminated against by unilateral divorce laws because they are seen as “condoning” the behavior and not taking “prudent action” even when that action would be against their biblical conscience.   Unilateral divorce laws that do not allow marital misconduct to be considered in dividing property are certainly not a “least restrictive means” of enforcement since several U.S. states do allow the consideration of maritial misconduct for that purpose.   Under most state laws, such a position can result in serious loss of financial abuse protections that would otherwise be available to them, and result in confiscation of even their retirement benefits late in life, in violation of the 1st and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

So, does the state have any compelling government interest in enforcing unilateral divorce laws that discriminate against spouses who take biblical stands for the permenance of their marriage? Does the state have even a compelling government interest in elevating the interests of the “Petitioner” while totally subjugating the constitutional rights of the “Respondent” where religion is not involved?

Here are some arguments the state has relied upon to pass and enforce civil laws that suspend the constitutional rights of “Respondents” who have had the civil charge of “irreconcilable differences” or “irretrievable breakdown” brought against them with no effective right of defense in Family Law Court:

  1. THE LIE: “Unilateral divorce is needed to keep battered or mentally abused spouses from being trapped in a bad marriage”

THE TRUTH: Returning to the fault-based system that balances the constitutional due process owed to both spouses should not unduly burden a battered or abused spouse in obtaining a divorce for cause. However, the definition of each of the various categories of abuse needs to be specifically and objectively defined, and can no longer be vague or subjective, as was too often the case in the past. Battered and abused spouses should then have no problem bringing clear and objective evidence to prove their case, and it is unlikely this was really an issue before unilateral divorce was enacted. Even so, society is better served if the biblical prescription for this situation is promoted. The biblical prescription calls for physical separation, with ongoing marital faithfulness by the offended spouse, and holding out the possibility of reconciliation if the misconduct can be treated and resolved.

See 1 Corinthians 7:10-11.

  1. THE LIE: “The ‘majority’ of divorce cases are uncontested, so the few cases that are contested don’t matter enough to justify a change in the law”

THE TRUTH: Recent studies show that in 80% of divorces there was a spouse objecting and morally opposed – this is a clear majority of cases contested, or would be contested if finances permitted. The coerciveness of this law and the lack of financial means to contest a divorce petition, that most families face, serves to give a false picture.

 

  1. THE LIE: “ ‘No-fault’ divorce only applies to couples who mutually agree to end their marriage”

THE TRUTH: In a cunning game of “bait & switch”, this misrepresentation was advanced in the earliest states to enact the new law. Two states actually did enact laws to this effect, but in California the uncontested piece was removed from the final version, and in Texas, it was enacted but ignored by the legal community. In all states, unilateral forced divorce is imposed on contesting spouses.

  1. THE LIE: “If we go back to fault-based divorce, we would just go back to the ‘bad old days’ when two people who both wanted a divorce had to perjure themselves to make up charges against each other

THE TRUTH: This argument is so illogical that it’s amazing anyone could be gullible enough to buy it. It’s like swinging a sledgehammer to kill a gnat.   All it would have taken to deal effectively with that situation is offer a choice of UNCONTESTED-only “irreconcilable differences”, or if a spouse morally objects to divorce, continue to require proof of fault-based grounds.   At least one state did exactly that (Texas), but the entrenched interests in the legal profession did not carry it out in that fashion after it was so enacted sensibly by the legislature, so Texas ended up with unilateral divorce like all the other states eventually did.

 

  1. THE LIE: “Unilateral divorce reduces the level of acrimony and perjury in a divorce case”

THE TRUTH: If anything, a law that strips one spouse (the moral objector) of all their constitutional rights to the free exercise of religion and conscience in raising their children, protection of contract rights from impairment by ex post facto laws, their right to equal protection under the law, and the right to protection of their property (not to even mention…their children) from seizure and confiscation without due process of law cannot credibly be represented as “reducing acrimony”.   If there is any “reduction” in the level of acrimony, it’s come merely from shutting people out of court altogether due to the unconstitutionally high cost of contesting an action that’s become nearly impossible to defend against.  The fact is, if there are children involved, the acrimony is not reduced, it’s only postponed until after the divorce, when big money is perpetually spent to bring issues back to court – making divorce very lucrative for the legal profession for years after the divorce.  In contested and uncontested cases, perjury also abounds no differently than before to conceal assets, exaggerate grounds allegations, thwart financial dissipation claims, etc.

 

  1. THE LIE: “If marital misconduct is considered in any aspect of a settling a divorce case, it clogs up the court system”

THE TRUTH: Given that 80% of “respondents” are divorced against their conscience, will and choice, enforcing real consequences for the petitioner’s willful, destructive acts against the marriage in both the division of property and the determination of “best interest of the child” would probably start driving down the number of divorce petitions the same way that they skyrocketed when all the economic and parental consequences were foolishly removed by law.  What factually clogs up the court is the ease and lack of consequences for the wrongdoer in bailing out of their marriage and family responsibilities, sometimes serially.  When an adulterous spouse can no longer dissipate thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in pursuing an affair and then be awarded a chunk of the innocent spouse’s larger pension / retirement just for bringing the divorce petition, the courts would dramatically unclog.  The following states were wise enough to discern this, and have enacted divorce statutes that consider marital misconduct in dividing marital property: Alabama, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire, South Carolina, Vermont, Virginia, and Wyoming. (Several additional states consider marital misconduct for child custody and alimony determination.)

 

  1. THE LIE: “Since unilateral divorce was enacted, the suicide rate among depressed wives has declined by 20%”

THE TRUTH: Whether or not this is objectively true, it’s also important to look at the endangerment and suicide rate in the children of the dissolved marriage. A reliable longitudinal study came out in 2012, the New Family Structures Study by Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas at Austin that sheds objective light on this argument by every type of living and child rearing arrangement.  Another factor that needs to be weighed and measured is the spouse and child endangerment that occurs when the stability of marriage is traded for subsequent cohabitation with violent and abusive unmarried partners – does the allegedly-reduced suicide rate among unfettered petitioners actually offset the incidence of murder, rape and battery that is the reality for women and children, post-divorce?

 

  1. THE LIE: “Unilateral divorce laws serve society by reducing the level of immorality when unhappy spouses are freed to remarry who they wish”

THE TRUTH: Grim divorce statistics from second, third or forth marriages, far and away higher than the 1st marriage divorce rate, cast considerable doubt on this argument. People are only truly happy when they unselfishly live for the good of others. Unhappy spouses tend to be self-focused people, which only reinforces their unhappiness. People who deal with their own issues before blaming their spouse tend to stay married and don’t tend to remain unhappy. Unilateral divorce laws have clearly increased the level of immorality in our society by reducing the marriage rate, by increasing unmarried cohabitation, rebound-lesbianism and generational sin that results when children aren’t reared well.  Given the economic incentives under the unconstitutional laws, combined with the acceptance of unmarried cohabitation, unilateral divorce has often encouraged deliberate spouse-poaching, the targeted breakup of a home.  Love is a decision, but emotions come and go.  Long-married couples all know that one falls in love with their spouse in a new and different way many times over throughout the course of their marriage.

  1. THE LIE: “The potential threat of unilateral divorce has a good effect of making couples work harder to keep their marriages healthy”

THE TRUTH: Most people do not actually know that so-called “no fault” divorce is not by mutual consent, so this argument is doubtful at best.  The fastest-growing rate of divorce is among couples married 30 years or more, thanks to Viagra and emptying nests, as well as the common perception, even among allies of covenant marriage, that empty-nest marriages are more expendable than marriages with children.  In an increasingly immoral society, couples are in danger of working overtime to safeguard their marriage so that they no longer can feel relaxed and secure in it, the whole point of marriage.  To the extent this assertion is true, it is probably not attributable to fear of the law itself but to fear of the skyrocketing rate of divorce that the immorality of this law actually drives.  Repealing unilateral divorce would, over time, have a far more beneficial effect on the stability of marriages and society.

 

  1. THE LIE: “Going back to the old fault-based system will overwhelm the courts”

THE TRUTH: See #6 above. This might be true for a short time due to the current high number of cases, but it would eventually dramatically reduce the number of divorce petitions actually filed, and most likely make petitioners who would otherwise file with unclean hands more willing to try meaningful counseling, clergy, etc., because they usually cannot prove any allowable grounds. Especially true if nebulous grounds such as “mental cruelty” were objectively defined in the law by specific behaviors and had to be proven with corroboration by a licensed counselor after “x” number of sessions. “Going back to the old fault-based system” is probably an exaggeration anyway, because there are endless creative possibilities for family-friendly measures to accompany the legal change needed to restore respondent and petitioner to a level playing field of due process, including enhancements such as counseling and conflict management / communication coaching.

 

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  |  Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce

– by standerinfamilycourt.com

Our Story (7 Times Around the Jericho Wall) – Part 1

by Standerinfamilycourt.com

Courtroom photo

Part 1:  FROM PETITION TO DECREE

In one of the “collar counties” of the Chicagoland area, there sits the massive new 3rd floor north wing of the county courthouse. The spacious hallway is lined with eight or so family law courtrooms, each with a hanging electronic agenda (docket) where dozens of sets of names per day scroll by, hundreds per day altogether.    Against everything in my deepest biblical convictions, this profound disgrace had not escaped us, of having our family name scrolling across that docket for a dozen or more days over the past 18 months.   My born-again husband decided 10 years ago that God had someone “better” for him, and when I found the evidence, I chose what I believe is the only biblical course of action. I chose to stand, pray and fast for our covenant marriage, staring down Satan who was devouring the once-strong husband of my youth in order to bring spiritual death to him. For seven years it was a back and forth spiritual battle as my husband went to work overseas and installed the other woman in his firm with the consent of his employers.   He came home often and stayed long,  clearly not committed to that other relationship.   We tangled over the issue only once or twice, on occasions when he asked me to initiate divorce and I told him it wouldn’t change anything except to make me disobedient to God, too.    I’d still have a husband for life who was running from God, whether or not we were divorced in men’s eyes (only).

 

You see, I disagree with my Pentecostal denomination’s position on divorce and remarriage, and I do not agree with the oft-heard doctrine of “biblical grounds” for divorce based on the 2 or 3 scriptures that most Protestant denominations have long taken out of context in order to give betrayed Christian spouses two “exceptions” that allow them to remarry with the Churches’ blessing (these misapplied scriptures are Matthew 5:32, Matthew 19:8-9 and 1 Cor. 7:15).    My denomination’s official position paper on this topic was revised in 1973, in the wake of many states passing the “no-fault” law that created unilateral divorce, because that legislation meant there was no longer any effective way to legally defend the marriage covenant about which the Most High commanded, “Let no man separate”.   Based on my understanding of all the New and Old Testament scriptures as a whole, I can only conclude that God created permanent lifelong marriage and stopped there – done.   Man sinfully created divorce at Satan’s behest, the first ancient attempt to redefine marriage to humanly, rather than divinely, cope with adultery and abandonment.

 

Jesus stated God’s position in this matter very succinctly: “from the beginning it was NOT SO [i.e. Moses unilaterally allowing divorces due to necessity created by evil circumstances]….I tell you, whoever divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery, and the man who marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

 

In November, 2012  my unrepentant husband broke the stalemate and filed a petition citing “irreconcilable differences”.   About 6 months later, I found out the woman who was trying to supplant me had suddenly been barred in April, 2012 from my husband’s work country because she had been living there illegally and she got caught after 5 or 6 years.   (I had prayed persistently that, as in the book of Hosea, God would put thorn bushes in their path and wall them off so they could not find each other, and it seems He had granted my prayer.)  Since the only existing “irreconcilable difference” was the adultery under my husband’s control, but not mine,  my husband’s “evidence” involved a certain amount of perjury and slander which I bore up under as the papers piled up.    I hired a Christian attorney after obtaining a list of referrals from the Christian Law Association and doing some probing interviews. There are plenty of Christian attorneys out there who are biblically illiterate and don’t see any biblical conflict with divorce in general or unilateral divorce (“no fault”) in particular.   My husband, in fact, hired just such a person to represent him.   Since the Lord had supernaturally given us a large sudden cash blessing years ago as the affair was starting, and this cash had remained idle in our bank account for several years,  I was afforded the rare privilege of being able to challenge and contest the truth of the grounds in a court trial.   Most other families have little financial choice other than to allow their God-sealed covenant marriages to be bulldozed by the amoral legal system and voluntarily split up the assets that God gave, for Kingdom purposes, to a one-flesh entity.

 

I didn’t realistically expect to win against the grounds charges in that trial because the law precludes that.   However, I did expect to have equal protection in court to bring the testimony and facts in my case to the same degree as my husband, and to state God’s point of view from the witness stand.   To God’s glory, I was able to do the latter, but to my utter shock, I found all of my constitutional protections tossed to the side by court rules designed to assure only one outcome in every case.   Still, God showed up with many miracles getting around some of those court rules, and to everyone’s surprise, we walked out still married on numerous occasions.   That phase of the trial cost me just over $18,000 in legal fees, and it gave me space I would not have had otherwise, to make the truly shocking discovery that my husband had been spending $50,000-60,000 per year on this affair from business and foreign bank accounts and charge cards I had no visibility of.

 

Soon after the judge ruled that we had undergone “irreconcilable differences” and gave us a deadline to “agree” on the division of our property to avoid a second, even more expensive trial, another piece of bad news showed up in my attorney’s office.   My husband’s retirement assets were only about 40% of what mine were, due to the extent of his financial misconduct, therefore he was going after my retirement assets in his settlement request,  as the amoral law of our state egregiously permits.   I am now 58-1/2 years old.   I do not believe in remarriage while my covenant husband remains alive, and would have insufficient time to make up the $200,000 this provision would confiscate from my account before I would need to retire. Outrageously, our state divorce law specifically states that marital misconduct cannot be considered by the court in dividing assets.

I was reluctantly forced to gather bank and credit card statement evidence, along with my husband’s expense reports to prove the extent of the financial dissipation,  and would be forced to bring scandalous public testimony about my husband and the smarmy details of his adultery into the courtroom, in order to protect my retirement funds from the unilateral divorce law. It literally made me sick to my stomach.

 

In other words, the law in all but a dozen states allows guilty petitioners to financially profit from their own gross misconduct by bringing a divorce petition,  if their spouse does not do so first, which may be against the non-offending spouse’s  conscience biblically. Not only that, but the courts go out of their way to protect those guilty petitioners against any fault-based consequences, regardless of the economic harm that it does to the innocent spouse.  Bow to the Baal of disposable marriage covenants, or suffer the consequences!   I will defer the long, tedious details of how that played out in our case to a future post, because I want to close by getting back to the Jericho Wall….

 

On several of my occasions to sit in court awaiting the start of our proceedings, I watched heartbroken as several horrible post-divorce disputes over children burst into the courtroom on an emergency basis. Each violent and abusive, heart-rending occasion gave me an opportunity to pray in the spirit for each of these families, for the salvation of each husband and wife, for the protection of the children, for the salvation of adulterous and abusive boyfriends or girlfriends with whom one or the other of the parents had taken up cohabitation. I don’t think I observed a single case where remarriage stability had risen from the ashes of those dissolved marriages.  I sat in tears of intense gratitude to the Lord for shielding our children from all this, and giving my husband and me 31 years of happy marriage before He permitted Satan to attack, time enough for them to be on their own and in solid marriages of their own.  I wondered if anyone would be praying for these families, had I not happened to be in the courtroom, sitting in my own pool of tears. I observed one embattled young father in whom I saw the obvious marks of seeking to be a good father, but beyond exasperated in his response to the court barring him his God-ordained role, and barely containing his seething rage. I believe God is going to hold judges and governments accountable for this some day! I prayed outside with one young mother and encouraged her about what she could accomplish on her knees to help her estranged husband become a better man, and become the dad her kids deserved. I was growing to hate this destructive law more with every case I witnessed, crying out to God each day.

 

After one hearing which my husband did not attend, my attorney and my husband’s attorney stood in the broad hall outside the courtrooms and argued for some 30 minutes over whether or not my husband obtained and used a certain credit card (hard evidence literally in my attorney’s hand that he did have this card; opposing counsel’s insistence that he did not). The spirit of the Lord came over me and inspired me to circle the hall seven times, praying in the spirit for the heaven-initiated demise of this immoral unilateral (“no-fault”) divorce law, passing under each of those scrolling electronic dockets with the names of hundreds of local families Satan was attacking through this evil system. It was a big hall, and I wondered if I’d really make the full seven circuits before the attorneys finished arguing with each other. I trusted God that since the Holy Spirit was telling me to do it, He would stop time until it could be completed, and indeed He did! I asked the Lord for this to be the start in the heavenly realms of the restoration of our nation and the turning back of His wrath on our nation since the mid-1970’s when our government decided it was OK to desecrate God-owned marriage, and to legalize the murder of unborn babies. A generation later, the latter abomination is clearly changing from coast to coast as God is bringing mercy and grace through technology as well as through favorable court rulings. I built the faith that day in the hall of the county courthouse to believe He intends to do the same with the lifelong marriage covenant which He ordained and with which governments destructively interfere.

 

Our individual story is still unfolding. Closing arguments in the property division trial have been submitted in writing after a series of bench rulings punishing me for my Christian stand taken in the courtroom. I will publish more details as they unfold and as further decisions or rulings occur. I am writing this account after later reading in a reliable publication that 80% of the divorces under U.S. “no-fault” proceedings or petitions occur over the moral objection of one of the spouses. That immediately tells me that only 20% of our outrageously high incidences of family destruction at the hands of local government is even potentially necessary. I’d say that the bulk of this mutually consenting 20% likely entails mostly adulterous, non-covenant second, third, and fourth marriages in which God was never a part.

 

In the Old Testament book of Joshua, chapter 6 gives the detailed account of how the Lord gave His seemingly nonsensical instructions for bringing this formidable wall around the city down so that the rest of the Promised Land could be taken and the nation of Israel could be born. These walls were reputedly 45 feet wide at the base and up to 40 feet tall, counting the 12-15 foot base. http://www.biblearchaeology.org/post/2008/06/the-walls-of-jericho.aspx#Article Jericho was the oldest fortified city in the world, where these walls had been established and stood for at least 3,000 years before God ordained that they come down. Clearly, only an act of God could ever bring them down. Clearly those walls stood in the way of what God wanted to do to build a nation, and it had to come down for that reason. The seven-circuit march, the trumpet blast and the shout were symbolic of what God was going to do by His supernatural power through ordinary, obedient human vessels. We learn from the Bible that the reputation of God’s people preceded them from earlier victories and caused the Jericho inhabitants’ hearts to “melt like wax”. Similarly, judges are afraid of what would happen if they ruled fairly in contested unilateral divorce cases, so they are seeking legislation to make existing laws even more unfair to the party morally opposed to the divorce or victimized by it, and they are seeking to unlawfully apply recent changes in the law retroactively to cases filed before the statutory effective date of the law, hoping to deter future contesters, especially religious objectors, and hoping there won’t be an appeal.

 

In our case, we are already preparing for the likelihood there will be an appeal, and most likely, a constitutional appeal. In a handful of states long ago there have been prior constitutional appeals, but it doesn’t appear there’s been one attempted in Illinois so far. Two or three came in the early 1970’s and a couple more came approximately 15 years ago in distant states. My attorney and I were told by constitutional attorneys that we will need to lose on all of our many non-constitutional points before the constitutional challenges will even be addressed by an appellate court…pretty disheartening in terms of overturning the law! The state appellate and supreme court opinions in the early cases are illogically dismissive of all the constitutional arguments made, while the dissenting opinions appear to be far more developed and thoughtful. Because the state has always won so far, none have advanced to the U.S. Supreme Court, which typically declines to hear heterosexual marriage cases that lack a civil rights issue or a multi-state conflict. The states have built through case law and court operating procedures a fortified wall around unilateral divorce that insulates and exempts it from the requirement to observe constitutional protections for divorce defendants / respondents…a fortified wall of 40 years’ standing that only God can sovereignly bring down, but I firmly believe He wants to bring down. The good news is that He typically uses the powerless to do such things for His glory!

Our Story, 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall – Part 2

Our Story, 7 Times Around the Jericho Wall – Part 3

No Day in Court for (Stander) “Jane Doe”, Our Story – Part 4

 

They may have “style” but they certainly have no “class”

87123-82987http://www.nytimes.com/video/fashion/weddings/100000003010012/vows-an-imperfect-beginning.html?smid=fb-share

Surrounded by his young children (and the smug-faced adulteress these little ones are now forced to call “mom”) the “persecuted” groom in this video gets all misty-eyed at how “incredibly difficult and painful” his divorce was. Yet he went into court with protections extending to judicial bias in his favor, while his COVENANT wife, for whom God “stands as a witness” could probably tell a tale that dwarfs his.

“..the one who hates and divorces his wife does violence against the one(s) he was called to protect”, says the Lord God Almighty, so guard your heart and do not act treacherously.. ” Malachi 2

“But what does the Scripture say? ‘Cast out the bondwoman [non-covenant partner or concubine] and her son,
For the son of the bondwoman shall not be an heir with the son of the free woman ‘ [covenant wife of one’s youth].” Galatians 4:30

 

7 Times Around the Jericho Wall  | Let’s Repeal No-Fault Divorce

– by standerinfamilycourt.com