Some Are Worried Vance Will Try to End No-Fault Divorce

Married couples across the US have had access to no-fault divorce for more than 50 years, an option many call crucial to supporting domestic abuse victims and key to preventing already crowded family courts from drowning in complicated divorce proceedings. But some advocates for women worried as old comments from now Vice President-elect JD Vance circulated during the presidential campaign opposing no-fault divorce. And after Donald Trump and Vance won the election, warnings began popping up on social media urging women who might be considering divorce to "pull the trigger" while they still could, the AP reports. Some attorneys posted saying they were seeing a spike in calls from women seeking divorce consultations.

Trump—who is twice-divorced—hasn't championed overhauling the country's divorce laws, but in 2021 Vance lamented that divorce is too easily accessible, as have conservative podcasters and others. "We've run this experiment in real time and what we have is a lot of very, very real family dysfunction that's making our kids unhappy," Vance said during a speech at a Christian high school in California, where he criticized people being able to "shift spouses like they change their underwear." Despite concerns, even those who want to make divorces harder to get say they don't expect big, swift changes.

Mark A. Smith, a political science professor at the University of Washington, said that while many Americans have become accustomed to no-fault divorce being an option, Vance's previous comments on making it more difficult to separate from a spouse could help jumpstart that effort. "Even though he's not directly proposing a policy, it's a topic that hasn't gotten a ton of discussion in the last 15 years," Smith said. "And so to have a national profile politician talk that way is noteworthy."

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Some Democratic lawmakers remain worried, pointing to the US Supreme Court overturning the constitutional right to abortion in 2022 as an example of a long-accepted option that was revoked. Before no-fault divorce, married couples had to prove their spouse had violated one of the approved "faults" outlined in their state's divorce law or risk a judge denying their divorce. Qualified reasons varied from state to state, but largely included infidelity, incarceration, or abandonment. (More no-fault divorce stories.)