No, thank God.
Since January 2007 New Jersey has had grounds for divorce based upon “irreconcilable differences”.
What are irreconcilable differences? Anything.
What is interesting is that prior to the irreconcilable differences law, most divorce lawyers, including me, filed most of our divorce complaints based upon “extreme cruelty”.
What exactly is extreme cruelty? Well… pretty much, anything.
Then what is the big deal about the introduction of the”Irreconcilable differences” law seven years ago? I mean, if “anything” constitutes irreconcilable differences, and if anything constituted extreme cruelty in the old days, what’s the big deal?
The big deal is that since the passage of the irreconcilable differences statute seven years ago, now that people can get divorced simply because they have differences that can’t be reconciled, that’s all they need to say in their divorce papers.
In the old days, before the irreconcilable differences statute was passed here in New Jersey, someone seeking a divorce here had to make out a true case for divorce based upon one of the then stated grounds, which almost always turned out to be extreme cruelty. In those days, most judges would accept anything that one person said about the other as meeting the requirements of “extreme cruelty”. But the law encouraged people to air all of their dirty laundry in the guise of pleading a cause of action for divorce based upon extreme cruelty, and when the receiving spouse read the allegations of”extreme cruelty” alleged against him or her, he or she would often go nuts.
The problem is that this unfortunate situation would often cause the divorce to start off on the wrong foot in many cases, leading to much pain for parents and children, and perhaps huge legal fees because one party was hurt about what the other party said about them.
Today, some states don’t have the irreconcilable differences statute, and other states, including Kansas, are unfortunately considering getting rid of it.
In fact, in a recent article in “”Wellcommons”, the authors state:
Rep. Keith Esau…has introduced a bill to abolish no-fault divorce by removing “incompatibility” as a legitimate reason to split. Esau and colleagues think it’s too easy to divorce.
Why is this a bad idea?
The authors think it’s a bad idea because:
The only way to have an authentic choice to stay married is to have an authentic choice not to. Limit divorce and marriage not only becomes impractical, it becomes meaningless. Marriage is something you get up every day and decide to do, not a prison sentence for earlier bad choices, in which you’re condemned to serve out your time. That’s what it means to say”I do” and keep saying it for as long as the marriage endures. No law can say it for you.
I advocated strongly for the passage of New Jersey’s irreconcilable differences statute. As a New Jersey divorce lawyer for many years, I saw how much damage the prior laws had done.
We have been fortunate here in New Jersey for the past seven years that our legislature finally enacted an irreconcilable differences statute for those people who are seeking to divorce amicably. The people of Kansas should do that which is necessary to defeat Rep. Keith Esau’s bill seeking to do away with the concept of divorce by irreconcilable differences.