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I say no. The divorce rate is high enough as it is. Clearly a majority of you are egging on the spouses of the Ashley Madison scandal to start filing en masse as soon as they find confirmation on the hacker site. 25 or so million new divorce cases. A good thing? Domestic abuse is one thing, nookie on the side is quite another. And, most are assuming in typical American knee jerk fashion that the scoundrels are all male. That women might cheat in marriage is super hush hush and divorce courts don't touch it. Most men married to women who cheat, live with the shame. If they went for a divorce they would be creamed as badly as if they were the active adulterer so they shrug and say "cheaper to keep her". That should cut both ways IMO. Especially in a marriage with young children I do not think a court should grant an automatic divorce if the only grounds is one count or even several counts of adultery. Simply a ridiculously low bar for something as serious and with such long lasting financial and emotional consequences as a divorce. People kill people doing silly things like texting while driving, or cleaning firearms and don't face as severe consequences as someone whose only crime was signing up for an account on Ashley Madison.
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You will be in the small majority, and I absolutely disagree with you. When one cheats on a spouse the contract/agreement between you becomes null and void. It's one of the most disrespectful things a spouse can do in a marriage.
If you think a dysfunctional marriage is a good environment for children, you are mistaken. Would you have things like there are in parts Africa where a woman cannot divorce even an abusive husband before paying back the bride gifts?
A cheating spouse is an abusive spouse. Think about STDs. If the cheating spouse gave the other an STD would this be OK and not grounds for divorce? Prisoners are charged with assault if they spit on a correctional officer's face for fear of them getting a communicable disease. I wonder what your real motivation is? Are you a spurned lover or a religious fanatic?
Last edited by LakeLifePA; 08-20-2015 at 01:27 PM..
Maybe not, but divorce is easy to get, so people don't want to work on relationships. Adultery is a legal reason for fault divorce.
Several Muslim countries and almost half of all US states (illegal in 21 states) still consider adultery a criminal offence. Prosecutions are rare, but they do occur and punishments can range from a $10 fine in Maryland to life imprisonment in Michigan.
Adultery laws are outdated, sexist and an infringement of human rights as the courts should not be regulating consensual adult behavior that occurs in private. They "extend back to the Old Testament", when women were treated as property.
All European nations have decriminalized adultery and, while it is not considered a criminal offence in most Western parts, it may still have legal consequences, especially in divorce proceedings.
However, adultery doesn't matter anymore as a reason for divorce, because almost every state now recognizes no-fault divorces. No-fault divorces are more common since no proof of fault is required.
Adultery is used as a ground for a quick divorce (without the waiting period of no-fault divorces). Another benefit of a fault divorce is the monetary gain. The wrongdoer often has to give up bigger portion of the marital property, or pay increased support and alimony).
Why do you need any grounds for divorce in our days of "no fault" divorces?
All states require you to give a reason for your divorce. Most states allow you to get divorced simply because you and your spouse no longer get along. Some states still require one spouse to allege fault, or that one spouse has acted in a way that justifies a divorce.
In states where fault is required or allowed, adultery can be the reason for your divorce. Proof of adultery may change the amount of child support and alimony a spouse receives.The spouse who was not at fault may also receive more of the household property in the divorce settlement.
Since marriage is now a state sponsored contractual agreement between 2 people (maybe more in the near future), the state is also the entity that has to decide how said contract may be dissolved (grounds for divorce).
Anyone is completely free to lobby their state legislators to make the reasons for dissolving the marriage contract as loose or as strict as they see fit. If YOU don't like the divorce laws in YOUR state, start writing letters and/or circulating petitions to get your legislators to change the laws. If you can get enough people to believe like you do, perhaps you can get the laws more in line with YOUR thinking!
Get busy, and good luck.
Marriage is a contract, and adultery is a violation of the marriage contract and grounds for divorce....simple contract law.
The offending party should forfeit alimony and child-support as well as the children.
Child support is for the children, as such the actions of the offending party should not be used to impact them. The behavior in breaking the contract should be considered in assigning custody. NOT be the sole decision point of it.
No fault will apply in most cases, but if someone defines marriage as "fidelity" and they can prove otherwise, why would it not be grounds? They should get additional consideration in the settlement.
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