Couples who file for divorce based on incompatibility grounds will have to attend an educational program unless a court waives the requirement due to “good cause” shown.
‘Divorce school’ classes, which the parties can attend separately or together, will cover the impact divorce has on children and their well-being, potential child behaviours and emotional states, how to respond and communication strategies to reduce conflict and foster cooperative parenting and reconciliation between parents as an option.
Couples will also receive information about resources available for families in relation to family violence, behavioural health, individual and couples counselling, financial planning, substance abuse and addiction.
The Republican authors of the bill, Representative Jason Nelson and Senator Rob Standridge, say that marriage is a “lifelong contract with the state and with your children.”
“If you are going through the whole divorce process and have kids, if we can do anything to keep people together, we should. Marriage is a lifelong contract with the state and with your children,” Senator Standridge said.
Discouraging divorce?
Divorce for incompatibility means that the couple is stating the marriage has broken down but neither spouse has specifically done something wrong. Also known as ‘no-fault divorce’, it has been blamed for an exponential rise in divorce rates as couples don’t feel bound by the marital agreement. No-fault divorces however have also been lauded as a saviour for women trapped in abusive relationships and couples facing acrimonious separations.
The idea has been raised that the bill’s goal is to discourage divorce by making it a little more complicated, adding a small step and a small expense. The fee for the class will be between $15 and $60.
Senator Standridge said, “I always thought Oklahoma’s divorce rate was very high” and Representative Nelson told Tulsa World that broken homes have an impact on social services, the prison population and the school system. As a result, divorce affects all taxpayers, he said.
But Representative Nelson says he does not believe the measure makes it more difficult to get a divorce.
“It seems like a small thing to ask people to do – to take a course – when the challenges that come from divorce are so permanent,” Representative Nelson said.
“By the same token, so is the harm done if they stay in a violent home.”
Divorce in Australia
‘No-fault divorce’ was introduced in Australia in 1975, meaning that neither party need be at fault for a divorce to be granted by the Family Court. A fault element does however remain in relation to child custody and property settlement issues.
In February the Minister for Social Services, Kevin Andrews, announced that the federal government would provide a $200 voucher to couples to participate in a marriage and relationship program, a parenting skills program or marriage counselling.
Writing in The Australian, Mr Andrews said “Given the enormous cost of marriage breakdown and the benefits of preventive education, the relatively small investment in these programs is worthwhile.”
Different from the Oklahoma program, the Australian program is aimed at couples before they have marital problems.
“Australian research also revealed that couples who attended a marriage and relationship education program were more likely to seek assistance if problems arose in their marriage,” Mr Andrews wrote.
Mr Andrews has acknowledged that the goal of this program is to prevent divorce, saying that if the scheme could prevent just 200 divorces it would have paid for itself.
“We are talking about something that costs many billions of dollars a year that – if you just do a simple calculation, about 50,000-55,000 divorces a year – that means that each divorce is costing over $100,000.
“So we would only have to prevent 200 divorces or 200 people deciding not to get married because they worked out beforehand they weren’t suitable for each other …
“This is a very modest investment in trying to tackle what is a huge cost to the community but … more significantly the huge cost in terms of personal trauma.”
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