Concept

Divorce

Overview

Divorce (also known as dissolution of marriage) is the process of terminating a marriage. Divorce usually entails canceling or reorganising the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage according to the law of the particular country or state.

Divorce laws vary considerably around the world, but in most countries, divorce is a legal process that requires the sanction of a court or other authority, which may involve issues of distribution of property, child custody, alimony (spousal support), child visitation / access, parenting time, child support, and division of debt. In most countries, monogamy is required by law, so divorce allows each former partner to marry another person.

Divorce is different from annulment, which declares the marriage null and void, with legal separation or de jure separation (a legal process by which a married couple may formalize a de facto separation while remaining legally married) or with de facto separation (a process where the spouses informally stop cohabiting). Reasons for divorce vary, from sexual incompatibility or lack of independence for one or both spouses to a personality clash or infidelity.

The only countries that do not allow divorce are the Philippines and the Vatican City. In the Philippines, divorce for non-Muslim Filipinos is not legal unless one spouse is an undocumented immigrant and satisfies certain conditions. The Vatican City is a theocratic state ruled by the head of the Catholic Church, and does not allow for divorce. Countries that have relatively recently legalized divorce are Italy (1970), Portugal (1975, although from 1910 to 1940 it was possible both for the civil and religious marriage), Brazil (1977), Spain (1981), Argentina (1987), Paraguay (1991), Colombia (1991; from 1976 was allowed only for non-Catholics), Andorra (1995), Ireland (1996), Chile (2004) and Malta (2011).

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

In the original texts

Passages from public-domain books where Divorce is discussed.

Among many savage peoples divorce is easy for both parties if there is mutual consent, but with the families in which father right prevails it is almost always easier for the man. The ancient Hebrew might divorce his wife for any cause he pleased, but there is no mention of a similar right on her part, and it doubtless did not occur to the lawgiver.
John Dewey, Ethics
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A., as he feels in honor bound to do. Yet the law allows any petitioner, male or female, to obtain a decree _nisi_ and to refrain from making it absolute for motives which are probably discreditable. The Divorce Law Commissioners strongly condemned this state of things, and the hardship in question is immensely aggravated in war-time, just as the war has given rise to many cases of bigamy owing to the chivalrous…
Bertrand Russell, Why Men Fight
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There is a twofold reason for this. The first is that one becomes evil by the evil of fault, but not by the evil of pain, as Dionysius says (Div. Nom. iv): "To be punished is not an evil; but it is an evil to be made worthy of punishment." And this because, since good absolutely considered consists in act, and not in potentiality, and the ultimate act is operation, or the use of something possessed, it follows that…
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
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Where there are children, it is a mistake to suppose that it is necessarily to their interest to make divorce very difficult. Habitual drunkenness, cruelty, insanity are grounds upon which divorce is necessary for the children’s sake quite as much as for the sake of the wife or husband. The peculiar importance attached, at present, to adultery is quite irrational. It is obvious that many forms of misconduct are more…
Bertrand Russell, What I believe
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Divorce was done in a beautiful private manner; case tried with strictly shut doors; all the five judges under oath to carry into the grave whatever they came to know of it: [Preuss, iv. 180-186.] divorce completed 18th April, 1769; and, within three months, a new marriage was accomplished, Princess Frederika Luisa of Hessen-Darmstadt the happy woman. By means of whom there was duly realized a Friedrich Wilhelm, who…
Thomas Carlyle, History of Friedrich II of Prussia — Volume 21
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Divorce

Overview

In the original texts

Philosophers who discussed Divorce

Related ideas

Place in the tradition