The only grounds in this state that will get you a divorce without proving wrongdoing are that you and your spouse have lived apart for 18 consecutive months. But in other no-fault states, people get divorces without ever seeing a judge. Twenty states have considered repealing their no-fault laws, but so far, few have done so. But the sad fact is that the number of divorces has increased 250 percent since the 1960s. Yet, everyone complains about juvenile poverty and crime, teenage pregnancy and kids on drugs, but there's very little said about the broken homes that are largely responsible for these problems.
Compulsory mediation is already standard in many states.
And there are other ways to try to reduce divorce. Thirty-five states require couples to attend some kind of instructional class before receiving a marriage license. First Louisiana and now Arizona have created a second kind of marriage license called a covenant that requires marital counseling and the couple signing a document that acknowledges that marriage is for life. Governor Huckabee told me last week that he likes the covenant concept but won't promote it because he understood it had not been very popular. Indeed, the New Orleans Times Picayune reports that out of 40,000 marriages in the first year a covenant license was offered, only 478 couples chose it.