When the divorce involves children, the parents would have to attend counseling sessions outlining the ill effects a split would have on their children. The bill also rewards couples who get counseling before marriage-shorter waiting periods and lower marriage license fees. Two decades ago, people who took the Bible seriously understood that divorce, except in cases of adultery or abandonment by an unbeliever, was wrong and would have dire consequences. Men who are divorced or separated receive in-patient psychiatric care 21 times more frequently than do married men. Divorced men heighten their risk of cancer over married men by about as much as if they began smoking a pack of cigarettes per day.
Divorce is now the number one factor linked to suicide rates.
As a rule today, divorced women see a decline in their standard of living of about 73 percent, according to researcher Lenore Weitzman, a sociologist at George Mason University and a leading authority on the subject of no-fault divorce. Divorced men, as a rule, see a gain in theirs of about 42 percent. Such statistics run counter to earlier promises by California Governors Edmund G. Brown and Ronald Reagan that divorce law reforms would build stronger families-by making the divorce process easier and less adversarial. In Grand Rapids, the abandoned wife is feeling the financial blow of her husband's departure. Out of that she has to pay for food, fuel oil, electricity, the telephone, car insurance, and clothes.