Divorce Law Research Articles

Does the Unilateral Divorce Laws Cause Child Weight Gain?

This paper studies the impact of unilateral divorce laws on child weight gain. I use difference-in-differences approach exploiting time and state variation in the adoption of the unilateral divorce law. I analyze a comprehensive nationwide health examination survey (NHANES I) during 1971-1974. The results show that exposure to unilateral divorce law leads to bigger Body Mass Index (BMI) for children between 2 and 18 years.However, according to the Center of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), this weight gain is still under the normality patterns. I also investigate the possibles transmission mechanisms for the increase in BMI. Results indicate that for the specic age group of children between 7 and 18 years the exposure to unilateral divorce law leads to bigger BMI and bigger probability to be overweight.

Introduction: The Interwar Woman Writer: Politics and Aesthetics

This special issue is prompted by a concern to probe the ways in which the claims of literary and political engagement were mutually constitutive for interwar women writers. These women lived through two rounds of electoral reform in 1918 and later in 1928, the opening up of the professions to some women through the 1919 Sex Disqualification Removal Act, the reform of divorce law in 1924 and 1937, as well as significant socio-political upheaval, including the first Labour government in 1924 and the 1926 General Strike. As they wrote novels, tracts and pamphlets, women writers assumed a wide range of official roles that were informed by the shifting political world in which they found themselves: Winifred Holtby was a member of the Six Point Group and Independent Labour Party; Sylvia Townsend Warner was a committed communist; Naomi Mitchison stood as Labour candidate for the Scottish Universities seat in 1935; Virginia Woolf had a life-long affiliation to the Women’s Co-operative Guild; Storm Jameson was a co-founder member of the Peace Pledge Union. The essays in this issue draw attention to the nuances of the political commitments of interwar women writers and their writing as a site of reflection on these commitments. The introduction situates this edited collection in terms of recent developments in modernist and middlebrow studies and provides summaries for the chapters that follow.

유대 종교법 미쉬나(Mishnah)에 나타난 여성의 권익: 혼인법과 이혼법을 중심으로

유대 종교법 미쉬나(Mishnah)에 나타난 여성의 권익: 혼인법과 이혼법을 중심으로

Who Reacts to Less Restrictive Divorce Laws?

AbstractObjectiveTo study how divorce behavior in Denmark changed following a July 2013 reform that removed previous restriction on immediate divorce by repealing mandatory 6‐month separation periods for uncontested divorces, instead allowing for immediate administrative divorce.BackgroundMost countries have mandatory separation periods that couples undergo before they can divorce. Separation allows couples a grace period, during which they may reconcile and stay together. Yet, the impact of separation periods on divorce risk remains understudied.MethodsUsing monthly time series data on divorce rates from 2007 to 2018 (T = 144), the research brief estimates the size and shape of the policy impact of the July 2013 reform. Using monthly administrative population data on all ever‐married couples (N*T = 11,304,566), the study further calculates the average characteristics of married couples in Denmark who would have remained together absent the reform.ResultsAfter an initial spike in the divorce rate driven by couples divorcing earlier, the divorce rate settled at a 10% higher level compared to pre‐reform. Couples who divorced because of the reform had been married for fewer years compared to other divorced couples, were ethnic Danish, and had high school degree as the highest educational level.ConclusionMandatory separation periods have a dampening effect on divorce rates.

Casting Off Egyptian Ḥanafism: Sharīʿa, Divorce, and Legal Reform in 20th-Century Egypt

Abstract This article explores an important debate on divorce law in early 20th-century Egypt between the sharīʿa judge Aḥmad Muḥammad Shākir (d. 1958) and the adjunct to the last Shaykh al-Islām of the Ottoman Empire, Muḥammad Zāhid al-Kawtharī (d. 1952). The debate is centred on Shākir’s argument that triple divorce (three pronouncements of the divorce oath in one utterance, deemed irrevocable according to the Ḥanafī school) should be treated as a single revocable divorce, a position that the Ḥanafī school rejects. The Egyptian divorce law was changed on 10 March 1929 to embrace the revised position, supported by the government, that a triple divorce counts as a single divorce, thereby making it revocable. Shākir argued that the official adherence of the sharīʿa courts to the preponderant opinions (al-rājiḥ) of the Ḥanafī school was one of the key obstacles to meaningful legal reform in this case. Despite his declared following of the Ḥanafī school, Shākir dismissed Ḥanafī legal norms and authorities, and advocated an urgent break with the control of the Ḥanafī legal school on the process of judicial reasoning in the Egyptian sharīʿa courts. To further demonstrate this dynamic, I take up a close reading of a court decision on whether custody payments (ujrat al-ḥaḍāna) include housing support (sakan), or if the latter is a separate calculated expense. Shākir not only ruled in opposition to the Ḥanafī preponderant position but also rejected the late Ḥanafī authority Muḥammad Amīn ʿĀbidīn’s (Ibn ʿĀbidīn, d. 1836) effort to harmonize the school’s position on this matter. I propose that Shākir was an iconoclastic Ḥanafī.

Outside Options, Job Mobility, and Gender: Evidence from Divorce Laws

This paper studies the effects of non-market outside options on measures of female job mobility using a hand-collected data set of 3,041 MBA resumes. Specifically, I examine two aspects of the household: spousal assets and children. In order to proxy for these unobserved household characteristics, I exploit cross-state variation in laws regulating post-divorce asset distribution and child custody assignment. Although female MBAs on average are significantly more likely to be employed by more firms and hold more positions than their male counterparts, the effect is largely explained by accounting for differences in household outside options. A decreased likelihood of receiving an equal share of spousal assets after divorce leads to an 8.6% increase in female MBA job positions held. An increased likelihood of gaining sole child custody post-divorce has no effect on female MBA job mobility. The findings also demonstrate a relationship between divorce legislation and job mobility for both genders.

Economic Gender Equality and the Decline of Alimony in Switzerland

Research has established a historical decline of alimony for divorced women in Western countries. Because the main function of alimony is to compensate for differences in couples' economic resources and needs, it is plausible that the reduction of alimony is a consequence of greater economic equality between husbands and wives. Scholars of divorce law, however, have argued that declines in alimony have instead resulted from a deliberate reorientation of alimony law that, by limiting alimony, has sought to facilitate divorces and to cause greater economic gender equality. Through a trend decomposition analysis that draws on couple income data linked to case‐level court reports from Switzerland before and after the introduction of no‐fault divorce (1990–2008), this study assesses the extent to which the decline of alimony is a consequence of reduced economic inequality in couples. During the study period, alimony declined from about one divorce in two to about one divorce in three, but the explanatory value of lower economic inequality in couples is limited regarding this trend. In fact, greater shares of couples' incomes earned by women and more egalitarian distributions of child custody after divorce can explain, at best, half the decline in limited‐term alimony. Greater equality in pension incomes explains steep reductions in unlimited alimony but cannot account for why limited‐term alimony awards for women of working age have become less likely. I conclude that increases in Swiss women's economic self‐sufficiency have not kept pace with the decline of alimony. The hypotheses that changing norms in alimony law are reducing alimony and that less alimony stimulates women's employment thus deserve closer examination.

A View from the Bench: Adjudicating Same Sex Divorce & Child Custody

ABSTRACT Same-sex divorce is on the horizon in light of the 2015 legalization of same-sex marriage. Since most divorce case law is based on heteronormative presumptions, the authors were curious to understand how local district judges would adjudicate a same-sex divorce case involving a child born prior to the legal marriage. A qualitative study was implemented and a convenient sample of four local district judges in Upper East Tennessee were interviewed for this study. Interview questions were submitted to the judges prior to the interview and themes were identified following data collection. None of the judges had adjudicated a same-sex divorce. All of the judges admitted that they were unfamiliar with case law on same-sex divorce and acknowledged that they would most likely default to heteronormative case law. The judges indicated that they have not had any training on the changing case law as it relates to same-sex divorce and custody issues. Implications and future directions for research are discussed.

TÜRK HUKUKUNDA “HAYATA KAST” SEBEBİ İLE BOŞANMA VE DOĞURDUĞU HUKUKİ SONUÇLARIN DEĞERLENDİRİLMESİ (TMK M. 162)

Türk Hukukunda boşanma, Türk Medeni Kanunu (TMK) m. 161-166 arasında öngörülen genel ve özel sebeplerin gerçekleşmesine bağlı bir hukukî sonuçtur. Kanunda öngörülen özel sebeplerden biri de “hayata kast” fiilidir. TMK m. 162’de öngörülen sebebe dayanarak bir boşanmanın gerçekleşmesi için hayata kast olgusunun varlığı şarttır. Hayata kast fiili, maddi ve manevi iki unsurdan oluşmaktadır. Maddi unsur, hayata kast fiilinin meydana gelmesidir. Manevi unsur ise fiilin kast iradesiyle ortaya çıkmasıdır. Hayata kast sebebiyle boşanmanın diğer boşanma sebepleriyle benzeyen sonuçları olduğu gibi bu sebeplerden ayrılan özel sonuçları da vardır. Hayata kast sebebiyle boşanma sonucunda ortaya çıkan sonuçların, eşler ve çocuklar açısından ayrı değerlendirilmesinde fayda vardır. Eşler açısından ortaya çıkan sonuçlar; kişisel ve malî sonuçlar olarak ikiye ayrılır. Mali sonuçlardan bazıları kusur oranına bağlı olarak değişmektedir. Bu sonuçlar için hayata kast fiili önemli bir ölçüt olmaktadır. Çalışmamızda belirttiğimiz sonuçlardan bir kısmı ise özel sonuçlardır. Bu özel sonuçlardan bazıları, TMK m. 181/2 ve 236/2’de öngörülen sonuçlardır.

תחייתה של עילת מות הנישואין: שיטת רבינו ירוחם בבית הדין הרבני <br>The Revival of the Death of Marriage Cause: R. Yerucham's Opinion in the Rabbinical Courts

תקציר בעברית: אחת ההתפתחויות החשובות ביותר בדיני הגירושין ההלכתיים הנהוגים במדינת ישראל, ואולי החשובה שבהן, היא ההסתמכות המאסיבית על שיטת רבינו ירוחם בפסיקת בתי הדין הרבניים. רבינו ירוחם, פוסק חשוב בן המאה הארבע-עשרה, קבע בשם רבו כי במקרה של בני זוג ה'מורדים זה על זה', כלומר מביעים חוסר רצון להמשך החיים המשותפים, יש לכפות את הבעל לתת גט לאשתו ואין הוא יכול להשהותו בטיעונים כאלה ואחרים. המאמר מיוחד לדיון בשיטה זו ובתחייתה משנות השבעים ואילך. 'תחייה' משום שמאז כתיבתה לפני כשבע¬-מאות שנים היא לא הוזכרה ולו פעם אחת בספרות ההלכה, עד לפסיקות בתי הדין הרבניים בסוף המאה העשרים. המאמר מצביע על חשיבותה של עובדה זו ועל כך שבאופן פרדוקסלי משהו היא זו שאפשרה את השימוש בה בימינו. המאמר עוקב אחר כניסתה לשיח של בתי הדין הרבניים ומראה כיצד הפכה לשיטה מרכזית ביותר המאפשרת חיוב בגט והפעלת סנקציות על הסרבן (או הסרבנית), במקרים הנפוצים מאד בהם אין לבן או בת הזוג התובעים גירושין עילת גירושין קלאסית מבוססת אשם, אלא רק רצון לסיים את הנישואין, רצון שגם בן או בת הזוג שכנגד שותפים לו במפורש או במשתמע, אולם הם מעכבים את הגירושין מסיבות כאלה ואחרות (בדרך כלל מתוך רצון להישגים בסוגיות הנלוות לגירושין). באמצעות בדיקה שיטתית של דעות כלל הדיינים המכהנים כיום בבית הדין הרבני הגדול, מנסה המאמר להציג את היקף השימוש הנרחב בשיטת רבינו ירוחם. נקל להבין את משמעותה העצומה של התפתחות זו על סוגיית הקושי להתגרש במדינת ישראל. באופן טבעי, היו דיינים שזיהו אותה עם העילה המכונה 'מות הנישואין' או 'קרע בלתי ניתן לאיחוי'Irretrievable) breakdown). המאמר עומד על סמיכות הזמנים המעניינת שבין עלייתה של עילה זו בעולם המערבי ובין כניסת השימוש בשיטת רבינו ירוחם לבית הדין הרבני, ומציע זיקה בין השתיים. מטבע הדברים מדובר במהפכה משמעותית ביותר בדיני הגירושין הקלאסיים של ההלכה. לא ייפלא אפוא כי בקרב בתי הדין קיימת גם אופוזיציה משמעותית לגישה הולכת ומתרחבת זו. המאמר מצביע על דרכים פרשניות שונות בהן הציעו דיינים שונים לצמצם את שיטת רבינו ירוחם, כמו גם על דיינים המתעלמים משיטה זו, ומציע כי בסופו של דבר מתקיים בין מחנה התומכים למחנה השוללים ויכוח עקרוני על אופיין של עילות הגירושין ההלכתיות ועל השאלה האם לאפשר גירושין 'קלים', כלומר גירושין שאינם נובעים מאשם של אחד הצדדים, אלא מעצם העובדה כי לנישואין אין תוחלת. English Abstract: One of the most important developments in the Israeli halakhic (Jewish Law) divorce laws is the frequent use of the opinion of Rabbenu Yeruham (Rabbi Yeruham ben Meshullam) by rabbinical courts. Rabbeinu Yeruham, a 14th-century halakhic decisor, ruled that in the case of a rebellious couple, that is to say, a couple in which both husband and wife are reluctant to continue living together, the husband is required to give his wife a divorce and without delay. The article discusses this position and its revival from the 1970’s onward. 'Revival' - because it was actually never cited in the halakhic literature until rulings by the Israeli rabbinical courts at the end of the twentieth century. The article deals with the significance of this fact which somewhat paradoxically is what enabled the revival itself. The article follows the first cases in which Rabbeinu Yeruham’s position was used, and shows how this position has become a central method for requiring a reluctant spouse to grant a divorce and imposing sanctions on a partner who refuses to comply with the ruling, especially in cases where the spouse does not have a classic ground for divorce, based on fault. Through a systematic examination of the opinions of all the dayanim (rabbinical judges) who currently serve in the High Rabbinical Court, the article attempts to identify the extent of the use of Rabbeinu Yeruham’s opinion. The enormous significance of this development is clear. The use of this opinion makes it significantly easier to get a divorce in Israel. Naturally, there have been dayanim who identified this approach with the modern divorce ground of death of or irretrievable breakdown. The article suggests that these grounds developed in the western world very close to the time of the revival of Rabbeinu Yerucham’s opinion and that the two developments are linked. In view of the dramatic effect of this approach on the classic halakhic divorce laws, it is not surprising that it has aroused significant opposition. The article points to various interpretive ways in which different dayanim have tried to reduce the impact of Rabbeinu Yeruham’s approach, as well as to dayanim who ignore it altogether. These suggest that we have a major dispute about the nature of halakhic divorce grounds and about the question of whether divorce should be made “easy”, i.e. simply because there is no hope of the marriage persisting.

Rozwód według procedury khula w prawie egipskim

Artykuł stanowi analizę egipskiego prawa rozwodowego według procedury khula, ze szczególnym uwzględnieniem ustawy nr 1 z 2000 roku. Autor stara się wykazać, że uchwalenie tego prawa było krokiem milowym na drodze do równouprawnienia kobiet w prawie małżeńskim. Poprzednie rozwiązania prawne uzależniały uzyskanie rozwodu z inicjatywy żony od spełnienia przez nią szeregu przesłanek lub zgody męża. Nowatorstwo rozwiązań wprowadzonych ustawą nr 1 z 2000 roku polega na tym, że rozwód nie jest uzależniony od zgody męża lub sędziego. Jest on raczej uzależniony od rezygnacji przez żonę z roszczeń finansowych wobec męża przysługujących jej zgodnie z szariatem, które wynikają z kontraktu małżeńskiego lub przepisów prawa.

Marital Property Laws and Women’s Labour Supply

In this article, we examine whether and, if so, how changes in the marital property law after the 1989 amendment of the Civil Code of Quebec to improve economic equality between spouses affected household labour supply and individuals’ marital decisions. We exploit detailed monthly information on individual labour market and marital status from the Labour Force Survey to analyze short-term changes in labour supply and marital decisions before and after the reform in Quebec relative to other provinces that did not experience changes in marital property laws over that time period. We find that the Quebec family patrimony changes reduced the work incentives of married women, with a stronger decline in hours worked among less-educated married women who gained most from the increased economic protection. The change in the Quebec redistributive divorce law increased the likelihood of divorce among relatively less-educated spouses (who have more to gain from the equal sharing of the family patrimony at divorce) and increased new marriages among couples in which wives are relatively more educated than husbands.

Individual resource games and resource redistributions

Abstract To introduce agent-based technologies in real-world systems, one needs to acknowledge that the agents often have limited access to resources. They have to seek after resource objectives and compete for those resources. We introduce a class of resource games where resources and preferences are specified with the language of a resource-sensitive logic. The agents are endowed with a bag of resources and try to achieve a resource objective. For each agent, an action consists in making available a part of their endowed resources. All the resources made available can be used towards the agents’ objectives. We study three decision problems, the first of which is deciding whether an action profile is a Nash equilibrium: when all the agents have chosen an action, it is a Nash Equilibrium if no agent has an incentive to change their action unilaterally. When dealing with resources, interesting questions arise as to whether some equilibria can be eliminated or constructed by a central authority by redistributing the available resources among the agents. In our economies, division of property in divorce law exemplifies how a central authority can redistribute the resources of individuals and why they would desire to do so. We thus study two related decision problems: (i) rational elimination: given an action profile’s outcome, can the endowed resources be redistributed so that it is not the outcome of a Nash equilibrium? (ii) Rational construction: given an action profile’s outcome, can the endowed resources be redistributed so that it is the outcome of a Nash equilibrium? Among other results, we prove that all three problems are $\mathsf{PSPACE}$-complete when the resources are described in the very expressive language of the propositional multiplicative and additive linear logic. We also identify a new modest fragment of linear logic that we call MULT, suitable to represent multisets and reason about the inclusion and equality of bags of resources. We show that when the resources are described in MULT, the problem of deciding whether a profile is a Nash equilibrium is in $\textsf{PTIME}$.

The Normalization of Conservative Gender Politics in Chile and the Role of Civil Society.

The article discusses two cases of gender policy making during the Chilean transition to democracy, the policy on domestic violence and the divorce law. By comparing the official discourses on these two policy projects we show that authoritarian gender regimes can resist transition to democracy despite a vivid civil society. The case of Chile was selected, on one hand, because it exhibits particularly resistant authoritarian institutional enclaves. On the other hand, Chilean women's movements are often cited as a paragon of women's movements in transitions. Despite the central role of Chilean women's movements as a strong civil society force conservative gender roles and institutions inherited from the autocratic regime (e.g., conservative divorce and reproductive rights) have remained dominant. I argue that during the time of transition conservative political actors, but also parts of civil society, negotiated on these gender roles and institutions and thereby reached a status quo. Recent cases of sexual violence in response to student's uprisings show that this status quo is quite stable and prevents a real coming to terms with state violence.

The Role of Procreation (Injāb) in Marital Life

Abstract Classical Islamic marriage and divorce laws focus on both spouses’ ability to perform sexually. In fiqh texts, sexual disability is considered a serious medical condition. The fiqh literature lists certain sexual disabilities unique to men, unique to women, or shared by both sexes. Infertility (ʿuqm) is not found in any of these early fiqh lists, although we have proof in various Islamic religious texts that fertility and procreation have always been highly valued in society. In contemporary fatwas (from the Sunni world), the picture appears reversed, as fertility is given priority over sexual performance. In this paper, I illustrate this shift in attitude between the classical legal texts and contemporary fatwas. Then, I offer possible explanations for it. Among the main motivations suggested for the change are feminist Muslim writings, a growing awareness of human rights in the Islamic world, advanced medical technology, and economic factors.

Divorce in the Movies: From the Hays Code to Kramer vs. Kramer

Movies often provide a window through which we can observe human behavior and legal institutions as they existed when the film was made. However, this is not true of the subjects of marital disintegration and divorce. Hollywood's rigid system of self-censorship, embodied in the Hays Code and the Production Code Administration, nearly blotted divorce themes right off the screen. What little was said of the subject during the middle third of the twentieth century was wildly wrong. The Code was written by and administered by staunch Catholics, largely to stave off boycott threats by the Catholic Legion of Decency. As a result, it reflected Catholic moral teachings, particularly the prohibition of divorce. This article surveys films about divorce from the pre-Code era (1930-34), the Code era (1934-68), and the immediate post-Code era (1968-1980s). It discovers that divorce themes were candidly portrayed during the pre-Code era but were thoroughly suppressed during the Code era. In the post-Code era, the subject crept back to the screen in a series of memorable films about divorce in the late 1970's and early 1980's. The article then analyzes Kramer vs. Kramer (1979) in detail, finding it to be one of the few classic treatments in film of divorce and family law.

THE PRINCIPLE OF SELF SUBMISSION IN DIVORCES CASES FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF LEGAL CERTAINTY

The problem of the principle of submission in the divorce law in the Religious Court by a non-Muslim couple occurs because the couple's marriage is based on Islamic law. What cannot be separated from Islamic law is Islamic family law because it is related to the faith of a Muslim. Islamic family law can only apply to Muslims and cannot apply to non-Muslims. The problem of the principle of submission to the divorce law was incomplete (incomplete norm) or the existence of a legal vacuum (vacuum of norm) in marriage law in Indonesia. This research is a legal research and is normative in nature. The approach used is statutory, case, and conceptual. The legal materials used are primary, secondary and tertiary. The method of collecting legal materials is first to qualify the facts and then to qualify the law. The analytical tool used is legal interpretation in the form of principal, systematic and grammatical interpretation.

THE GROWING REALITY OF LEGAL RIGHTS FOR COMPANION ANIMALS

Over the past decade, the fifty state legislatures of the United States have been adopting legislation for the benefit of the group of animals known as companion animals (pets). When considered together as a set, these laws create an initial set of legal rights for that group of animals. To explore that conclusion, the definition of a legal right and the particular statutes, such as new divorce laws, are considered.

How Intra-Household Bargaining Power Affects Female Entrepreneurship?

Women’s weak bargaining power against spouses can be a hurdle to their entrepreneurship opportunities. By utilizing the state- and time-varying divorce laws in the U.S., we find that female entrepreneurship increases significantly when the divorce laws give women stronger bargaining power. This effect mainly comes from an increase in survival rate by existing business owners. The results are more pronounced for the more entrepreneurial-type of occupations, and among women who ex ante face a less friendly social environment. Overall, our results provide the first evidence that intra-household bargaining power can be an important but unstudied factor for female entrepreneurship.

Divorce Laws and Assortative Mating in the Marriage Market

This paper examines how unilateral divorce affects assortative mating, and household income inequality across newly married couples as a result of changes in the matching patterns. I exploit variation in the adoption and timing of unilateral divorce laws using three estimators---the two-way fixed effects, DID_M, and synthetic control estimators. I find that unilateral divorce increases income inequality by 6–20%. This is likely driven by increased assortative mating---unilateral divorce moderately increases educational sorting and substantially increases income sorting. This is partially driven by reduced marriage entry and changes in women’s labor force participation at the time of marriage.