Why is it so easy to get married, and so hard to get divorced?
Why is it so easy to get married, and so hard to get divorced? Shouldn’t it be the other way around?
This is a perceptive question.
It would not not be that hard to get divorced if you were to give up everything in the divorce. If you told your spouse, “I want a divorce so bad I’ll make this as easy for, and as advantageous to, you as possible by waiving any and all rights to the marital assets, spousal support, the kids, everything,” you could get divorced relatively quickly and without having to incur any attorney’s fees. Heck, your spouse might gleefully pay an attorney to draw the “my spouse is giving away the farm” divorce action and settlement agreement. Of course, while getting the divorce that way would be fast, easy, and cheap, you’d pay a dear personal price—in both the short and the long run—in almost every other aspect.
When you think about it, there are many endeavors that are easy to enter but prove to be very difficult to finish or exit (or at least to finish or exit comfortably):
- college (easy to enroll, get loans), hard to finish, hard to pay off student loans, especially if you drop out and still have to pay the loans off
- business (easier to get into than to stay in, and brutal to experience a business failure)
And marriage is another. The longer one is married, the harder a divorce usually is due to so much having been invested in a marriage of long duration. It’s easier for two single, childless people to marry than for two married people to divorce who acquired property/assets and incurred debt and who may have begotten minor children (to say nothing of the disruption divorce inflicts on the physical and emotional reliance upon each other that spouses develop over time). With this in mind, it’s hard to conceive a way by which we could reasonably and responsibly make easier than marrying the dividing the property/assets, apportioning responsibility for marital debts and obligations, and determining the custody of minor children in divorce.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
Tags: difficulty, divorce, divorce law, ease, joining in marriage, liabilities, marital assets, marital debts, marital property, marriage, matrimony