No-Fault Marital Dissolution: The Bitter Triumph of Naked Divorce

In this Article, the author examines the origins of the no-fault divorce movement, concluding that the abandonment of fault grounds was conceived as a conservative measure intended to facilitate the reversal of the escalating divorce rate and to replace traditional marital dissolution with therapeutic divorce. This reform collapsed at mid-point, achieving only the jettisoning of divorce grounds. The author argues that an unintended consequence of the reform battle was the transformation from mutual consent divorce, the operating milieu for most of the twentieth century, into divorce on demand. The author concludes that this transformation has resulted in a significant loss for women.