Employment And Divorce

A new study to be released in the American Journal of Sociology by Liana Sayer of The Ohio State University looking at 3,600 couples surveyed in 1987-1988, 1992-1994, and 2001-2002 shows "how employment status influences both men's and women's decisions to end a marriage.

[A] woman's employment status has no effect on the likelihood that her husband will opt to leave the marriage. An employed woman is more likely to initiate a divorce than a woman who is not employed, but only when she reports being highly unsatisfied with the marriage. . . .

For a man, not being employed not only increases the chances that his wife will initiate divorce, but also that he will be the one who opts to leave. Even men who are relatively happy in their marriages are more likely to leave if they are not employed[.]

The finding seems to reflect data that I've cited in the past on the subject that appear to show that economics is still probably the strongest tie that holds marriages together and the biggest influence on recent trends in divorce rates, but that the dynamic is complex. In a nutshell, the key economic factor seems to be the economic dependence of women on men in a marriage. When it is present, divorce is rare. When it is absent, marriages tends to survive in good times, but not in bad ones.

I've hypothesized in previous posts that the driving factor behind the divide in divorce rates between college educated and non-college educated couples is that college educated women relative to non-college educated women (1) have more to gain economically from their husbands (who have better incomes and often benefits like favorably priced health insurance and defined benefit pension plans), (2) sacrifice more of their earning potential by being married and having kids (first, because they actually stay at home as a result, and second, because experience matters much more in professional careers than in blue collar jobs), and (3) have lower expectations that they will be able to secure a match or new job that puts them in at least as good a position as they are in when married (because they have more room to do worse and less room to improve, and because the better men tend to stay married while the less desirable ones do not, on average).

Thus, even though college educated women (at least when they have children and are married to college educated men) generally have more earning capacity than non-college educated women (at least when they have children and are married to non-college educated men), also tend to have a greater economic dependency upon their husbands.

Other data have tended to show in multiple countries that an important factor in divorce rates of couples relative to each other within countries is the ratio of a husband's income to a wife's income. Marriages in which wives have more earning power relative to their husbands are more likely to end in divorce.

A Father's Day column by Vincent Carrol in the Denver Post questioned this economic interpretation for a rise in divorce rates, noting that job prospects for men aren't that much worse than they were in the 1960s and that in absolute terms couples are strong married in hard economic times because they can pool income and reduce expenses than they are when they are not together. But, his analysis paints with too broad a brush.

The men who are most likely to get divorced, those who lack college educations, have faced four straight decades of near total economic stagnation, sharing in almost none of the economic growth of that overall prosperous era, while better educated professional men have shared in that economic growth. Meanwhile, the economic prospects of women have improved dramatically in those four decades in all social classes.

But, while much better than they were in the early 1960s (when women made up single digit percentages of most professions and often remained unmarried and childless if they chose to do so at all), the economic gains for higher level women professionals who marry and have kids have consistently shown the greatest lag behind men in the same professions. The "mommy track" career pattern, of choosing to take time off from work to raise young children and to take positions within a profession that provide a better work-family balance to a greater degree than men, as much as more blatant discrimination in compensation between men and women, accounts for a very large share of the enter gender gap in compensation today. Women who don't marry and have kids and have college educations have incomes very similar to men with college educations (even if they have married and/or had kids).

The "mommy track" gap is very top heavy. Low skilled jobs of women with no college education tend not to have very seniority and experienced based pay scales. The seniority and experience factor for women who are lawyers, and doctors and business chiefs, in contrast, as illustrated with data like the University of Michigan Law School alumni survey, can be intense.

Considering policy responses to this situation is beyond the scope of this post. Obviously, nobody is seriously proposing that we should return to the 1950s regime when women were all but barred from almost all professions by school teaching, nursing and secretarial work (and professional such as laundry work and child care that constituted outsourced forms of homemaking). Neither do we want to return to the Baby Boom era barefoot and pregnant model in which economic dependence that strengthened marriages flowed from having children early and often. 

It may be that marriages that are too strong aren't even desirable.  The stronger a marriage is, as a result of economic dependence, the more an economically dependent wife will tend to tolerate mistreatment in that marriage, up to and including domestic violence, a husband that engaged in incest with her children, affairs, and so on.

But, it is also the case that we either have to learn to find ways to make a reality with less stable marriages work better, or rethink the economic incentives within marriage and the way that women choose to be involved in the workforce, if we wish to improve the status quo.

Addressing issues that aren't driving the problems won't produce solutions.  Even changing the standards under which marriages are entered into, or divorce is available wouldn't necessarily work.  In the era well before no fault divorce, when economic trends weakened marriages arose, divorces and de facto divorces became more common and changes in the law regarding the availability of divorce, followed rather than preceded this trend.  Likewise, parallel to the trend of high divorce rates in recent decades (although they have started to fall again) is the increasingly widespread trend of couples never getting married in the first place.

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Counsel Sometimes Required In Civil Contempt Cases

The U.S. Supreme Court held today that there is sometimes a right to counsel in civil contempt case, typically brought to secure compliance with child support orders by imprisoning self-employed people or people who have access to assets beyond the reach of the court's jurisdiction (such as funds in an asset protection trust) by incarcerating them until they comply.  Civil contempt remedies are available in a wide variety of civil cases, but is rarely permitted in ordinary debt collection cases and in other cases (typically involving alleged violations of court injunctions), the parties typically are not indigent and have or have access to legal counsel.


Typically, in these cases, the critical issue is whether there is an ability to comply with the court order.  Incarceration for non-payment when there is a mere inability to pay (a remedy once called "body execution") is an unconstitutional debtor's prison remedy. 

The existence of the child support judgment and the fact that it has not been paid is typically self-evident from the record.  But, the existence of income not succeptible to garnishment, or of assets that cannot simply be levied upon with a writ of execution is often hotly contested.  The fact that a mistake on this point renders the incarceration not just inaccurate but unconstitutional makes the stakes particularly important.

I've handled both sides of such disputes for clients myself, and while the black letter law of contempt proceedings is fairly clear, judges and the sheriffs who manage the incarcerations are often confused by them because they are outside the ordinary criminal procedure mold that governs the vast majority of incarceration cases.  The contempt of court remedy is often a critical safeguard in securing compliance from the most evasive and dishonest child support debtors, but is sometimes applied inappropriately to punish people who truly are simply unable to pay, rather than merely unwilling to pay.  For whatever reason, child support debtors are among the most common to refuse to personally acknowledge and concede that they owe a debt even after court rulings to the contrary, so these cases are among the most contentious forms of debt collection actions.

The high court found that while incarceration of people for civil contempt can be allowed in some court systems where there is pro se party friendly environment that calls attention to the critical issues at the hearing and provides a simple form driven way for the unrepresented person to participate in the process, that such incarceration is unconstitutional without a right to counsel provided at state expense when the court system is no friendly to pro se parties or is too complex for an unrepresented person to handle.

Thus, while the South Carolina civil contempt process at issue in  the case before the U.S. Supreme Court failed the test, it is entirely possible that the due process protections for the same kind of proceeding in Colorado might meet the high court's due process standards.

The 5-4 ruling is a departure from most past rulings of the U.S. Supreme Court on procedural due process requirements, which have typically imposed a clear bright line rule in a class of cases, rather than setting forth a more generalized standard to apply on a court system by court system, or even case by case basis.  The conservative dissenters would have found that there was no right to counsel in these cases.

Since state governments, almost to a one, are currently in a very tight fiscal situation and would be hard pressed to pay for court appointed counsel in these cases, the likely response to the ruling will be for state court systems to develop pro se party friendly court procedures for run of the mill child support contempt of court cases.

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Crime Down In 2010 (Fifth Year In Row)

Crime levels fell across the board last year, extending a multiyear downward trend with a 5.5 percent drop in the number of violent crimes in 2010 and a 2.8 percent decline in the number of property crimes.

Year-to-year changes released Monday by the FBI in its preliminary figures on crimes reported to police in 2010 also showed declines in all four categories of violent crime in 2010. All categories for property crime went down as well. . . .

Violent crime last increased in 2005. Property crime last rose in 2002.

The FBI reported that violent crime fell in all four regions of the country last year — 7.5 percent in the South, 5.9 in the Midwest, 5.8 percent in the West and 0.4 percent in the Northeast.

From here.

Yesterday's new showed divorce rates down in Colorado. Teen pregnancy continues to hover near all time lows.

Also in the news, and possibly one explanation for the shift was the results of a new survey showing that the percentage of children ages 3-17 diagnosed with ADHD had increased from 5.7% for 1997-1999 to 7.6% for 2006-2008.

The economy can't explain the decline. The regional trends don't match immigration trends. Incarceration rates have been relatively stable in this time period. But, one thing that has changed and drives a disproportionate share of the year to year variation in crime, is the changing drug scene.

Domestic meth production is dramatically down. Illegal use of prescription drugs is up. A significant share of the illegal marijuana market has shifted to the legal medical marijuana market. Cocaine use isn't particularly high. There has been a pretty dramatic increase in legal use of drugs for mental health conditions.

One way to read the recent trend is that a lot of people who used to be self-medicating with illegal drugs supplied by a rough and tumble world of gangs and organized crime are finding chemicals to address their problems through distribution channels that don't drive street crime to nearly the same degree and provide a much more predictable product.

An alternative and not necessarily inconsistent possibility is that we are reaping the benefits of a long economic boom from the early 1980s until 2007, interrupted by only relatively brief and mild recessions. People may commit crimes on impulse, but a lifestyle that leads to commiting serious crime with little hesitation and routinely committing less serious crimes is decades in the making. A long period of relative plenty may have narrowed the pool of people who were in dire poverty as young children and became more predisposed towards crime as a result.

A third possibility is that technology is making it harder and less profitable to commit many crimes. People carry less cash. Cars have more anti-theft devices. Bank robbers and rapists are more likely to get caught. The decline in meth was driven by more strict control of the ingredients that go into it.

Whatever the reason, it is hard to deny that it is good news.

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Does Law Have Insufficient Visual Drama?

Once upon a time, where you wanted to sell real estate, you handed some soil or twig for the property to the buyer in what was called livery of seizen. Couples kiss, wear traditional costumes, and exchange rings when they marry in front of a crowd. One of the traditional ways to revoke a will (recently litigated in Colorado) is to destroy or deface the physical document (which leads to a number of peculiarities of probate law). Traditionally, wills were read aloud after a death, although that rarely happens these days. Even though it no longer legally matters, it is traditional to seal a contract with a handshake. When sports teams finish a game, win or lose, the players each slap hands saying "good game", emotionally putting an end to disputes over the details that led to the final result. Churches acknowledge affiliations to their faith with dramatic baptisms in the Christian church and a vividly memorable circumcision ceremony for infant Jewish and (at least in traditional societies) adolescent Muslim boys. Basic trainees in the military, men entering monastic orders, and prison inmates have their hair shorn, and are stripped of almost all of their personal possessions.

The current story arc in the webcomic Red String's (set in Japan but written by Gina Biggs of Georgia) features Hanae Niijima, a lesbian whose mother will not accept the fact that she has come out or acknowledge Hanae's true love Fuuko Akimoto. The set up to the scene is in this dialog:

Hanae: Why can't you be happy for me? This is who I am. This is ME.

Mother: It's NOT you. You were my sweet little girl who liked flowers and unicorns; who loved to be dressed up in frilly clothes and have me curl your hair. You were never a tomboy!

Hanae: That's STILL me. You think you have to be boyish to like a girl? That's . . .you can't believe that.

Hanae decides the overcome the conceptual block that seems to be getting in the way of her mother by making a visual statement:

Hanae: Fine. [Grabbing scissors with one hand and her long flowing curly hair with the other.]

Mother: What are you doing?!

Hanae: If its frills and curls keeping you from accepting this then I'll get rid of them. Will that work?

Hanae then hands a long pony tail of crudely cut off hair into the hands of her shocked mother who sits, holding it, staring off into space.

Obviously, I'm not recommending that this become a ritualized part of the process of coming out that is mandated in any way. But, powerful visual dramas can often convey meanings about abstract concepts, particularly emotionally charged ones, that some people have a hard time grasping from mere words.  Hanae's mother might be able to understand from the hair in her lap what she couldn't when her daughter merely spoke to her.

For example, one of the classic problems that one sees in modern family law litigation is that one or both of the people who once were married, or at least a loving couple, can't let go of that relationship. The service of the divorce petition, the signing of the papers, the dryly worded court order ending a marriage and providing for the sharing of the children and property of the marriage, and often a restraining order as well, don't communicate to the former member of that relationship with adequate emotional force that the relationship is really, once and for all, over.  Some people are simply beyond reaching by any means of communications, but a large number of people who go through family law proceedings simply don't really understand at an emotional and subconscious level what has happened until much later, even if they can parrot the court's ruling.

Perhaps if that message could be conveyed with more visual drama in some universally accepted new ritual, more people who move on, and there would be, as a result, less senseless fighting driven by old emotions instead of new practicalities. The demise of fault based divorce has made the process much more antiseptic for all involved in the process, but have we overdone it to the point of failing to really acknowledge in an emotionally valid way that not just the legal construct of the marriage, but also the emotional reality of the relationship that it approximates, has ended. Shouldn't the symbolism and ritual that ends of marriage need to be even more powerful and less subtle than the symbolism and ritual that starts one?

Adoptions tend to be even more understated, for fear of spooking the relinquishing parents, and not surprisingly, the main complaint that gets litigated in adoptions is that of relinquishing parents who claim they were properly appraised of the gravity of their actions.

A classic problem in consumer litigation of all kinds is the not infrequent failure of a debtor or consumer, already overwhelmed by paper and having trouble determining what is most important, to realize that a summons and complaint in a lawsuit is a once and for all speak now or forever hold your peace notice that has profound legal consequences if ignored.  This lack of understanding is one of the driver's of the almost ubiquitous paranoia about ulterior motives and about being cheated by one's betters found among unsophisticated people who have frequently been on the receiving side of litigation.

Perhaps we would do well to imitate the litigation practices of the protocol agents of the advanced civilization in the science fiction book "Jaran" by Kate Elliott, where legal disputes are announced by delivery of a physical baton in person by a courier, and one responds to the allegations at a mandatory in person appearance at the designated place and time, as inefficient as that may be, rather than simply enforcing the duty to appear by entering a default judgment against a party who does not appear (one that is often forgotten until property is seized pursuant to the judgment).

I have no empirically evidence to support the theory that more dramatic visual drama in the legal system would make any difference at all. The modern trend has been to strip away formalities, arcane language, pompous court room surroundings, wax seals, fancy ribbons and the like from legal matters. Instead, modern legal proceedings and legal facilities, favor plain English, the bare minimum of in person appearances, contemporary but understated and inoffensive surroundings suited for efficient, processing of business matters, dispenses with wigs and obtuse morning suits, and use very simple seals and acknowledgements - relying on the ability to confirm orders with third party repositories rather than lack of counterfeitability for reliability. Many documents that used to have to be notarized are now simply signed under penalty of perjury with no third party verification of identity or intent.

For lots of purposes this trend may be a good one. It demystifies the legal system and makes it more accessible to pro se parties. Much of what courts do is as much administrative business as it is emotionally meaningful decision making. For the most part, people prefer an inexpensive, quick, form driven informal probate process to the traditional succession proceedings of courts of equity will all their pomp and circumstance. And, some parts of the court process, like the delivery of jury verdicts finding someone guilty or not guilty, have managed to hold onto some of the drama that gives them emotional power. But, maybe some of the time, particularly in civil matters that don't involve business people and may have consequences for people who do not have the same cultural heritage as the lawyers and judges who are running the system, a higher touch, lower tech approach is in order and would make courts more effective. It is certainly a hunch that would be worth exploring with more systematic research.

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What Ever Happened To Mortgages?

"11.1 million, or 23.1 percent, of all residential properties with a mortgage were in negative equity at the end of the fourth quarter of 2010, up from 10.8 million, or 22.5 percent, in the third quarter. The small increase reflects the price declines that occurred during the fourth quarter and led to lower values. An additional 2.4 million borrowers had less than five percent equity, referred to as near-negative equity, in the fourth quarter. Together, negative equity and near-negative equity mortgages accounted for 27.9 percent of all residential properties with a mortgage nationwide. . . .

The consensus is that home prices will fall another 5 percent to 10 percent in 2011. If so, the most that negative equity will rise is another 10 percentage points, all else equal. . . .

The aggregate level of negative equity increased to $751 billion in Q4, up from $744 billion last quarter but still below $800 billion a year ago. Over $450 billion of the aggregate negative equity dollars include borrowers who are upside down by more than 50 percent." . . . About 10% of homeowners with mortgages have more than 25% negative equity. . . . Just under $200 billion more is for borrowers who have 25% to 50% negative equity. . . .

In Nevada, over 65% of homeowners with mortgages owe more than their homes are worth [and another 5% have less than 5% equity]. Arizona and Florida are around 50%. Michigan, Georgia and California are all over 30%.

From here.

The total number of mortgages that are upside down or near upside down (which in practice means that sale costs would leave the seller upside down) is 13.5 million. In February, there were 13.7 million people unemployed (an unemployment rate of 8.9%). While there is no doubt significant overlap between the two groups, many of the unemployed don't have mortgages, rent, or aren't upside down in their mortgages, so the combined misery numbers are great. There are far more people in the United States who are upside down on their mortgages, in default on their consumer loans, and/or unemployed than there are who are members of unions (although the two groups, of course, are not mutually exclusive).

In Colorado, about 20% of homeowners with mortgage owe more than their homes are worth, and another 5% have less than 5% equity. Nationally, about half of homeowners have mortgages.

Nationally, about 13% of all mortgages are in default, including about 4.5% that are in the foreclosure process. The 2010 peak was 14.5%. Before the housing bust, 5.5% was typical and about 1% of mortgages were in the foreclosure process at any one time.

While 8.5% of all mortgages are in default (excluding foreclosures which are another 4.5%), the rates vary by loan type. For subprime loans the default rate is about 30% (another 14% are in foreclosure). For option ARMs it is about 20% (another 18% are in foreclosure). For Alt-A is it about 14% (another 8% are in foreclosure). For FHA/VA/etc. loans it is about 10%. For non-agency jumbo prime mortgages it is about 5% (another 2% are in foreclosure). For agency prime mortgages it is about 3% (another 1% are in foreclosure).

Non-agency jumbo prime mortgages are defaulting at the rate the all mortgages combined did six years ago.

About 30% of all real estate sales are either short sales or sales of foreclosed properties.

Three years of recession have trimmed $1.4 billion of consumer debt off the nation's balance sheets, bringing the total to $11.4 billion, but much of that has come from writeoffs rather than payoffs.

About 74% of all consumer debt is purchase money mortgage debt, 6% is home equity revolving credit lines, 6% is car loan debt, and 5% is student loan debt. Credit card debt comprises 6% of consumer debt, and 3% of consumer debt is of some other type. Thus, the vast majority (91%) of consumer debt is either secured by collateral or not dischargable in bankruptcy, and two-thirds of the rest is held by credit card companies. About 10% of all consumer debt is currently in default, more than double the norm in a boom economy.

Sometimes foreclosure sales do cover more than is owed on the loan, but the people losing their homes often only find out about their windfall much later: "In a search of just three Front Range counties — Denver, Arapahoe and Adams — The Denver Post found that dozens of former homeowners were owed more than $653,300 since 2008." The biggest surpluses approach $50,000, and many are in the $10,000 to $30,000 range. Little affirmative effort is taken to find those entitled to the funds (often letters are mailed to the foreclosed upon house!).

A settlement has been reached with five big banks in the Robo-Signing foreclosure process scandal:

The lenders could be fined under the final agreement or forced to write down the value of their loans to borrowers who owe more on their mortgages than their homes are worth. The banks are Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo and GMAC. Together, they have 59 percent of all U.S. home mortgages, according to Miller.

Also under the draft terms, a lender's denial of a mortgage modification reportedly would trigger a review by an independent individual or panel.

Analysis

The fact that five banks have 59% of all U.S. home mortgages is itself remarkable. Their bad decisions (and bad decisions by lenders whose loans they purchased, often at a discount), are coming to roost, and in much of the nation a huge share of all families are under pressure as a result.

How do you even begin to have an economy on a basis that makes sense when 70% of homeowners with mortgages are upside down or have less than 5% equity, and your state has recourse loans, as Nevada does? I'd be willing to guess that Nevada also has a below average rate of free and clear homeownership, and that Nevada has a disproportionate share of loans that are more than 25% upside down which make up the lion's share of bank losses.

Why save money when you could be foreclosed upon at any time and have your savings seized for a deficiency judgment? Why pay your credit cards when you are in default on your mortgage, will lose you home in short order, and you will be subprime and unable to obtain new credit for the next seven years no matter what you do? The credit card company has no realistic possibilty of collecting out of your non-existent home equity, or your non-existent savings, and will have to compete with a huge deficiency judgment if you file for bankruptcy diluting their claim against any assets that you may have. They can hope to be first in line to garnish your wages for a while, but that is about it.

If the bankruptcy code provided for a cramdown for residential real estate, the creditable threat of it might lead to a mass produced mortgage modification wave with the consent of lenders in distressed real estate markets like these. But, it doesn't, thanks in part to the recalcitrance of people like Colorado Senator Bennet. So, tens of millions of people with upside down homes will soldier on with no incentive to make money. No amount of tax cuts can create an incentive to encourage people to maximize their productive earnings if creditors are in a position to immediately take all the tax savings away.

The priority that the tax code gives to child support and maintenance also creates a strong economic incentive for couples to divorce and shield some income from creditors (and squeeze out other garnishments of wages). Add to that the pressures that economic strife already places on families, and the situation becomes corrosive to families (althought this may be a ticking time bomb, right now, people can't afford to move out and form new households or hire divorce lawyers, so divorces are temporarily down).

There is really very little chance that the real estate in Nevada or California or Arizona or Florida will recover to their previously price levels any time soon either. Real estate in all of those states was grossly inflated by a price bubble that was deeply out of touch with any reality based measures.

If banks actively seek to enforce deficiency judgments against Nevada home owners, it isn't unthinkable that a third of more of all Nevadans could go bankrupt. A handful of banks are the beneficial owners of the lion's share of the real estate in Las Vegas and Reno.

READ MORE - What Ever Happened To Mortgages?

Really Big Love and Bunhill Fields

Ziona Chana, a 66-year-old man in India's remote northeast who has 39 wives, 94 children and 33 grandchildren -- and wouldn't mind having more. They all live in a four storied building with 100 rooms in a mountainous village in Mizoram state, sharing borders with Myanmar and Bangladesh, media reports said. "I once married 10 women in one year," he was quoted as saying.

His wives share a dormitory near Ziona's private bedroom and locals said he likes to have seven or eight of them by his side at all times. The sons and their wives, and all their children, live in different rooms in the same building, but share a common kitchen.

The wives take turns cooking, while his daughters clean the house and do washing. The men do outdoor jobs like farming and taking care of livestock. . . . They are supported by their own resources and occasional donations from followers.

From here.

The man leads a Christian polygamous sect (called "Chana Pawl" after the patriarch's late father) founded in 1942 with about four hundred families as members in a single village, "this industrious group manufactures wooden furniture and aluminium utensils."

A brief historical account of the Chana puts it in the context of the "fact that it took barely 50 years for the entire Mizo community to embrace Christianity, then a totally alien religion, [which] has been attributed to the revival movements. . . . The first European missionaries arrived at Aizawl (then Aijal) in 1894, and 12 years later, revival movements effecting mass conversions started. Wave upon wave of revival swept the land until the entire Mizo community abandoned its old religion, animism, for the new religion, Christianity before the end of World War II." Mizoram State is about 95% Christian (Wikipedia puts the figure at 90.5% based on a 2001 census), and the vast majority are adherents of more traditional forms of the Christian faith, predominantly as part of Presybeterian denominations. It was granted statehood in 1986, twenty years after an armed insurgency movement began there. Another sect that arose in the same period consists of people who moved to the jungle and stopped wearing clothes. The revival movement also gave rise to a Jewish sect known as "Bnei Manashe" which has now mostly migrated to Israel.

Islam limits a man to four wives and has canons of interpretation that discourage the practice on the grounds that the fairness to all wives demanded by Islamic law is difficult to manage, although serial polygamy can circumvent this limit to some extent. The limit in Islam was a reform from prior law that permitted more spouses.

The Hebrew Bible, in contrast, has numerous examples of polygamy, some of which involve political leaders with more than four wives, and neither the Christian Old Testament nor the Christian New Testament expressly prohibit polygamy (Reformation figure Martin Luther once wrote a letter privately acknowledging this in a case involving a minor European aristocrat, which his solus scriptura stance caused him to acknowledge was permitted).

Of course, Christian tradition from early on, in part due to the preachings of early church fathers such as Saint Augustine, Basil of Caesarea, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus and Tertullian, has generally strongly disfavored polygamy in practice (with notable exceptions such as the early Mormons and some European Anabaptists). And, while polygamy has been banned by the main denomination of the Church of Latter Day Saints for more than a century and by Utah State law (as a condition imposed for it to receive statehood status), it has been quietly tolerated in communities like Hinsdale that are an open secret, and quietly practiced on a smaller scale in suburban Utah with only rare interruptions (usually for offenses other than polygamy itself) more of less continuously since it was legally banned.

I suspect, but do not know, that this arrangement in India is made possible legally by the facet of private law in India that assigns certain domains of the law, such as marriage, divorce and inheritance in same religion couples to religious authorities rather than secular legislatures and courts (a secular legal regime applies to mixed faith families):

Indian family law is complex, with each religion having its own specific laws which they adhere to. In most states, registering of marriages and divorces is not compulsory. There are separate laws governing Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Sikhs and followers of other religions. The exception to this rule is in the state of Goa, where a Portuguese uniform civil code is in place, in which all religions have a common law regarding marriages, divorces and adoption.

The practice in India actually has roots in the laws of its British colonial rulers, and is rooted in the same freedom of religion concepts that developed into the First Amendment in the United States in a somewhat different manner at around the same time. "This system of distinct laws for each religion began during the British Raj when Warren Hastings in 1772 created provisions prescribing Hindu law for Hindus and Islamic law for Muslims, for litigation relating to personal matters." This was a natural concept for him because at that point in English history, marriage, divorce and inheritance of personal property (although not real estate) were governed by the clergy under canon law, rather than common law courts:

In the Church of England, the ecclesiastical courts that formerly decided many matters such as disputes relating to marriage, divorce, wills, and defamation, still have jurisdiction of certain church-related matters (e.g., discipline of clergy, alteration of church property, and issues related to churchyards).

Their separate status dates back to the 12th century when the Normans split them off from the mixed secular/religious county and local courts used by the Saxons. In contrast to the other courts of England the law used in ecclesiastical matters is at least partially a civil law system, not common law, although heavily governed by parliamentary statutes.

Since the Reformation, ecclesiastical courts in England have been royal courts. . . . practitioners in the ecclesiastical courts were trained in civil law, receiving a Doctor of Civil Law (D.C.L.) degree from Oxford, or an LL.D. from Cambridge. Such lawyers (called "doctors" and "civilians") were centred at "Doctors Commons", a few streets south of St Paul's Cathedral in London, where they monopolized probate, matrimonial, and admiralty cases until their jurisdiction was removed to the common law courts in the mid-19th century. (Admiralty law was also based on civil law instead of common law, thus was handled by the civilians too.)

At the time Hastings made his decree, for example, cemetaries were also segregated by faith under applicable English law, with dissenting religions tolerated, but restricted to cemetaries such as the famous Bunhill Fields that was active at the time (and was elevated to the highest level of historical preservation in England on a par with sites like Number 10 Downing Street, this week as a legacy of the path taken by the British towards religious toleration) despite the fact that it had and continues to have an established chruch, the Anglican Church (prior to the Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church). Notable residents of Bunhill Fields, who would have been subject to persecution and punishment similar to that of political prisoners in authoritarian regimes today in most countries outside England included:

•William Blake (1757-1827), poet, and his wife Catherine (1762-1831)
•John Owen (1616-83), Congregational minister
•Susanna Wesley (1669-1742), mother of John and Charles Wesley
•Daniel Defoe (1661-1731), author of Robinson Crusoe
•John Bunyan (1628-1688), author of The Pilgrim's Progress - his elaborate tomb includes an effigy of Bunyan and bas-reliefs of scenes from his great allegory
•Isaac Watts (1674-1748), hymnwriter
•George Fox (1624-1691), founder of the Society of Friends (Quakers) - in the Quaker Gardens, next to the Bunhill Fields Meeting House

Of course, if you weren't a King, the scope of matrimonial law at the time was pretty meager. For the most part, it consisted of granting women "separation from bed and board" in particularly dire cases (legal separations still exist today, I've litigated them, but are now chosen by parties due primarily to religious beliefs rather than because divorce in unavailable as an option for lack of proof of fault). Divorces were about as common as death row pardons are today, they happened, but were highly exceptional. Unlike the inheritance laws for real estate, in which the most senior male heir received everything in order to prevent the fragmentation of the estate, personal property inheritance in canon law was similar to that under modern inheritance laws that divided it amongst all of a person's closest living descendants.

READ MORE - Really Big Love and Bunhill Fields

Cohabitation Agreements

39 percent [of divorce lawyers] report an increase in the number of cohabitation agreements that protect property and other assets for partners living outside the perimeters of legally recognized marriages.

Rare in some areas of the country as recently as 15 or 20 years ago, such contracts are coming into their own, said Ken Altshuler, the group's president-elect in Portland, Maine. "They're really on the cutting edge of relationships today as more people move in together." The elite organization of divorce lawyers strongly advises cohabitation agreements for unmarried heterosexual couples along with same-sex partners whose unions are not legally recognized, especially when children are adopted by one but not both partners.

"To go to court to enforce your rights is just very expensive," said Susan Bender, a Manhattan lawyer who routinely handles cohabitation agreements for same-sex couples.

"Otherwise there's litigation, the hiring of an attorney," she said. "It's dispiriting to young couples to come into my office to begin their romantic relationship with figuring out who gets the IRA, but it makes so much sense." . . . cohabitation agreements can protect an unmarried person's stake in jointly owned property like a house or a condo and guard against seizure for payment of spousal debt.

"If we break up and there's no agreement, I don't have a claim," Viken said. "The litigation between two people who own a house together and aren't married is much more difficult than two married people who are getting divorced." About 30 percent of the attorneys who responded to the survey said a majority of cohabitation agreements they draw up are for same-sex couples. With only a handful of states recognizing gay marriage, the agreements can spell out legal rights both in and out of state.

From here.

Colorado doesn't recognize gay marriage and while the Colorado General Assembly is considering a civil unions bill this session, which I support, it doesn't have one yet.

I tend to call them domestic partnership agreements, but I prepare them and taught financial planners about the circumstances when they are useful and the terms they should contain when I was a professor.

READ MORE - Cohabitation Agreements

Patterns of Divorce

Most marriages that end up in divorce were horrible from day one, but some are good for a while before going bad according to a new study.

About one in three newlywed couples gets divorced within 10 years, but their paths to breaking up differ. . . . A majority of new husbands and wives who display negative personality traits, communicate poorly with each other and experience unrelenting stress in their lives split up in the next 10 years[.] Among couples whose marriages do well for several years . . . divorce occurs for nearly 20 percent, apparently because poor communication skills eventually undermine the union.

The study by Justin Lavner and Thomas Bradbury at UCLA interviewed and tracked 172 newlyweds for ten years.

The hopeful side of this news is that it suggests that most divorces may be preventable through better attention to the compatability of couples in the first place.

READ MORE - Patterns of Divorce