Googling around a little, I get the impression that there may have been, as there’s a lot of emphasis on Nevada’s short residency requirement and less on the divorce laws themselves. Also, apparently the first “no-fault” divorce law was in California, in 1969, so the Nevada law must not have been technically no-fault, but something damned close.
If the mood strikes me, I may look around more.
ETA: Also, so far as it goes, there were other ways around the strict divorce laws if you were willing to commit perjury/fraud on the court.
This is why you had the old trope “My wife won’t give me a divorce!” A man might have left his wife and be living with his new girlfriend, but he couldn’t divorce his wife. She could divorce him over his adultery, but he couldn’t divorce her because she hasn’t committed adultery. And so he is stuck married to his ex and can’t legally divorce her.
I thought the old time limit in Nevada was longer, more like 3 months. Checking around finds that the current residency requirement is 6 weeks. Was this the case “back when”?
Other films that in some way involve a Nevada divorce/residency issue include The Misfits (Thelma Ritter ran a rooming house for women getting a divorce and MM was one of her tenants that just got hers.) and Desert Hearts. (Made in 1985, wow, time flies.)
The tradition was to throw your wedding ring off a particular bridge into the Truckee river once the divorce came thru. They showed this at the beginning of The Misfits. Ah yes, theVirginia Street Bridge I remember visiting Reno way back then and seeing kids in the river below the bridge, supposedly looking for rings.
For anyone with any means, sitting out 6 weeks in Reno is a snap. The problem is you can’t leave the state at all.
They had the equivalent; the usual charge was “extreme mental cruelty” which was very liberally defined to include “he said something to hurt my feelings.” When I divorced in 1981, that was the grounds my ex used. I could have gone with charging her with adultery, since I had an ironclad case, but I was out of work and couldn’t afford a lawyer and she didn’t take any alimony and let me keep the house. Note that this was after the laws were liberalized: until the late 60s, adultery was the only grounds.
AFAIK, Nevada always had a six-week residency requirement. The divorce industry made a lot of money for them. It was not no-fault divorce, but the grounds were like “extreme mental cruelty” – things that were easily adaptable to any situation.
In the UK, until the early 60s, the easiest grounds for a divorce were adultery. It had to be proved though, and it was common for the man to fake it.
Private detectives made a good living from ‘surprising’ the guilty husband in a hotel room with his ‘lover’ and then testifying in court. The ‘lover’ was paid, but may or may not have been a prostitute.
Yes, but again, you couldn’t divorce your spouse because YOU committed adultery, only the “wronged” spouse could sue for divorce. So this dodge of fake adultery only works if the other spouse also wants a divorce and you just need to come up with a cause of action together.
Yeah, the latest series of Downton Abbey is using that as a theme. Hard Luck Edith’s “boyfriend” happens to be married to a woman who’s insane. His latest plan: Move to Germany, establish residency, get a German divorce. What could possibly go wrong?
Writer Ford Madox Ford wanted a divorce before the first war; he’d given his wife ample grounds–and had even moved in with another woman. But she refused. So he went to Germany, his father’s original home; Ford’s last name was actually Hueffer at the time. He failed at the German divorce. Throughout his life, Ford had several other lovers but his wife stood her ground; later, she said she probably shouldn’t have. Ford was considered extremely scandalous; by today’s standards of reasonable divorce laws & toleration of “shacking up” he was just, umm, human…