Is there any country wherein you can divorce someone without their consent? A family situation of many years prompts me to ask this. I’m also curious just for the heck of it.
Well that’s generally the case in Australia. The only ground for divorce is that the marriage has “broken down irretrievably”. This is established once the spouses have been physically separated for a year. After that time either spouse can file an application for a divorce with the Family Court. The other spouse’s consent is not required. Except in some unusual circumstances (the couple has **not ** been separated for a year or the Family Court doesn’t have jurisdiction), it’s not possible to oppose the divorce.
I’d have thought this was pretty much the situation in any country that has a “no fault” divorce regime.
Some more info on the Australian situation here.
Sure…in the United States.
Essentially you need to go to court with grounds for a divorce basically saying your partner is the “bad guy” (spouse beats you, caught spouse having sex with someone besides you, etc.). In these cases the spouse does not have to agree at all to a divorce since if the court agrees the spouse messed up the divorce is granted. What constitutes grounds for divorce vary from state to state.
The flip-side to this is a no-fault divorce where both parties tell the court they are not pointing any fingers but do not want to be married. Again what is needed to pull this off varies from state-to-state (seems not living together for some time is a common requirment).
Thanks much, Cunctator. I’ll take a look at it.
I should have said that the couple in question is in the United States, anyway, though I appreciate any answers anyone can give me. I had been told by the wife in this case that the husband refused to give her a divorce. If that doesn’t matter, I’m sure she would be interested to know that.
As with any of these sorts of questions the only really appropriate answer is for the person in question to consult a divorce (in this case) attorney licensed to practice in the state they live.
For an example here is a link to Maryland’s web page on how divorces work there: http://www.marylandlawonline.com/md/family/divexpln.htm
They mention 6 grounds for divorce…prove at least one and you get the divorce.
Again remember different states have different rules. In the 70’s my mom moved to Nevada and got a divorce there. I was too young to know the reasoning for that and never bothered looking into it but the little I picked up was that Nevada had simple residency laws and liberal divorce laws. No idea how it all works today (moving to another state for purposes of divorce) but might be something to ask the attorney about if your friend is desperate to get out of the marriage and her state makes it difficult.
Divorce is not a voluntary process here. Many divorces are granted in every US state over the objection of one of the parties. A quick Google search shows that France, England, Canada, Germany (pdf) (although it looks pretty tough), and other countries all permit non-consensual divorce if some grounds can be shown. Sometimes there is a waiting period.
Or are you talking about no-fault divorce? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-fault_divorce#United_States_history. Most states have some kind of no-fault option in their list of grounds for divorce.
Here is Ohio’s statute, for example:
Incompatibility is the “no-fault” provision. As you can see, it requires both parties to consent. But if you spouse is uncooperative, you can move out and get divorced a year later. Or you prove one of the other grounds, if it applies.
In New York, it’s trickier http://www.divorcenet.com/states/new_york/new_york_grounds_for_divorce. Here is an index of state divorce laws. Enjoy.
Here is a link to state-by-state divorce law information. The link send you to Louisiana’s page but simple enough to choose any state. This still is no substitute for an attorney. A consultation may be free or at least little cost and is the best first step.
Thanks, Whack-a-Mole and Gfactor. I think from what you’ve posted, though, that she’s kind of stuck. She doesn’t have any of the grounds by the examples given, but there may be something else.
She hadn’t considered no-fault divorce, as she understood that he would have to agree to it.
She needs to talk to a lawyer. There all all sorts of urban legends out there about divorce law. A lawyer should be willing to explain her options to her for free.
I’ll let her know that.
As the links that Whack and Gfactor provide indicate, typically in the U.S. you can get a divorce over the objections of your spouse. In many cases, if the parties agree to a divorce you can get one more quickly than if one person wants to stay married, and who leaves whom may have some effect on the division of the marital assets. When someone says “he won’t give me a divorce,” they usually mean “He’s making me wait the whole statutory period,” or “I don’t know what I’m talking about.”
Note that this is the product of reforms over the last several decades. There was a time when you couldn’t get a divorce without spousal consent absent evidence of abuse, adultery, etc. I’m not aware of any state that doesn’t have similar reforms, but their may be 43 of 'em for all I know.
One of the reasons people used to go to Nevada for divorces is in fact because the state would grant you one quickly. Traditionally, the courts of any state in which either spouse were present could grant a divorce according to state law, so if a state had a divorce statute that said “Sign here and you’re divorced,” it would likely be effective for anyone who signed, so long as they showed up in the state to do so. (Note however, all you aspiring Pinkertons, that you still had to tell your spouse about the divorce.)
–Cliffy
In the law of England and Wales you can get a divorce based the grounds that you have been separated for five years - you can do this without the consent of your spouse.
BUT I would imagine you would need to be resident to apply for this, and you would also need to have an address to serve papers. The latter point isn’t as silly as it may sound: I know of at least one case where a friend had to hunt for the address of someone they had been married to in order to get an official divorce.
There might be similar in Scottish and Northern Irish law, I’m not sure.
IANAL, anecdotal info, etc.
My niece, after years of putting up with a lazy, arrogant no-good husband that none of us liked anyway, finally had enough, and filed for divorce in Arizona, where they had been living for several years. She had lots of grounds for it – non-support, alcoholism, at least verbal abuse. Plus throwing her out of their house, on which she was paying the rent since she was the one with the steady job. Anyway, her husband was extremely opposed to the idea, but was also too lazy or drunk or arrogant or whatever to even come to any of the scheduled hearings. She got the divorce in a matter of weeks, with full custody of their child, and support payments ordered. So yes, it can happen.