Rensselaer Journal, Volume 10, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 April 1901 — Reaction Against Divorce. [ARTICLE]

Reaction Against Divorce.

The Supreme Court of the United States has handed down a decision which will have the effect of checking the American divorce nania. The substance of the decree is that divorces granted in a state where both husband and wife have legal residence are valid in any part of the country, but that divorce granted in a state or territory where the parties have not a legal residence is invalid. This will reduce to a bigamous statue many persons who temporarily removed from their legal residence to a more accommodating state or territory for the purpose of procuring detachment from a legal partner who had grown inconvenient or insufferable, the motive in a large majority of such cases being immediate remarriage to another party already selected. The decision will not operate against collusive divorce when the parties are rich enough to be able to remove to a new legal residence and abide there long enough to satisfy the terms of the decision. The decision is to be welcomed as a practical step in the direction of uniform divorce legislation in the United States. No legislation on the subject will be effectual which does not absolutely prohibit marriage of the guilty party or of both parties until at least a year after granting of a decree. So lax has divorce practice become in the courts that marriage has ceased in a large measure to present to the contracting parties an aspect more serious than that of a temporary agreement, to be dissolved at the caprice of both or of either. If remarriage were made difficult, or, what would be better, impossible in law, the divorce mill would grind more slowly and the original contract would carry more moral as well as legal weight. If the tie were tightened in the first knot there would be less disposition to cut it for a second. —Chicago Chronicle.