No-fault divorce is exactly what it sounds like. There is no “fault” involved in the grounds for divorce. Neither spouse must prove that the other spouse has been guilty of misconduct. In fact, any misconduct is essentially irrelevant to obtaining the divorce. Adultery and other forms of marital misconduct are generally no longer penalized by the law of divorce. (In some states, however, misconduct may still have an effect on custody and alimony awards, but these states are gradually changing to systems in which misconduct plays no role at all in any of the divorce proceedings. Also, some states continue to retain some of the original fault-based grounds for divorce along with a no-fault method of divorce.)
The initial reasoning behind the change to no-fault divorce was to attempt to lessen the antagonism and pain of divorce. No longer would detectives need to be hired to prove adultery; no longer would a couple’s “dirty laundry” need to be aired in public; no longer would a battle be waged regarding who was at fault in the marriage. A marriage could be terminated simply because the spouses no longer felt that the marriage could survive.
To some extent, no-fault divorce has succeeded. Divorce has been changed from a moral action in which a guilty spouse is punished and an innocent spouse is rewarded to essentially an economic action. The focus has changed from proving fault in a marriage to deciding the practical matters of dividing the couple’s property and providing for child custody and childcare. Although there have been recent attempts to revoke some states’ no-fault divorce laws, to date, none of these attempts have been successful. The public still believes strongly that no-fault divorce is not a cause of marital breakdown, but instead, is a valuable method for peacefully ending marriages that have become unsuccessful.