#956 1969 · State of California (Governor Ronald Reagan) · Family law / legislation
Divorcing couples had to prove one spouse to blame, so California removed blame from law
the problem
Family courts were asked to rule which spouse was legally at fault in every divorce, a rule that rewarded lying
background
Under fault-based divorce law, the only lawful way to end a marriage in most US states was to prove one spouse guilty of a specific offense — adultery, cruelty, desertion — in open court, with the other spouse required to be legally innocent for the divorce to be granted at all. Couples who simply wanted to separate amicably had no lawful path to do so; the system forced them to fabricate grounds, commit perjury, or stage evidence of misconduct that often hadn't occurred, since a mutual, blameless breakup wasn't a category the law recognized.
Rather than try to make fault-finding fairer or faster, a state study commission and the California legislature concluded the fault requirement itself was the problem — it wasn't protecting marriages or establishing truth, it was manufacturing false testimony as the price of admission to divorce court. Governor Reagan, whose own 1948 divorce from Jane Wyman had been finalized only after she accused him in court of 'mental cruelty,' signed the Family Law Act in 1969, eliminating the fault requirement entirely.
what everyone would do
The expected reform was making fault-finding fairer or faster — clearer evidentiary standards, quicker trials — while keeping the underlying premise that a divorce required proving one spouse legally responsible for the marriage's failure.
what they saw
California's reformers saw the fault rule wasn't protecting marriages, it was manufacturing perjury as the price of divorce-court admission, forcing couples who just wanted to separate to invent grounds they didn't have.
the move
California's Family Law Act let couples divorce by citing 'irreconcilable differences,' with no requirement to prove either spouse guilty of any specific wrongdoing, replacing the adversarial fault trial with an administrative dissolution of the marriage.
why it works
Removing the fault requirement eliminates the incentive to lie in the first place, since neither spouse needs to prove or disprove wrongdoing to obtain the divorce, which collapses the adversarial trial into an administrative filing. Because the fix addressed why courts were full of fabricated testimony, rather than trying to detect fabrication better, it reduced courtroom conflict without requiring any change in how honestly people behaved.
the payoff
California became the first US state with no-fault divorce in 1970; every state adopted some form within two decades.
where it breaks
It requires separate mechanisms for property division, custody, and support to function independently of fault, since removing fault from the divorce question doesn't resolve genuinely contested financial or parental disputes. It also assumes both parties have roughly comparable bargaining power going in — critics argue no-fault removed leverage a wronged, lower-earning spouse previously held in fault-based negotiations.
what came after
No-fault divorce became the national and eventually near-universal Western standard for ending a marriage, credited with sharply reducing perjury and adversarial courtroom conflict in divorce proceedings, though it remains politically contested by critics who argue it made divorce too easy to obtain.
references
- [1]Fault lines: Is no-fault divorce on unsteady ground in California and nationwide?Daily Journal, 2024dailyjournal.com
- [2]The Evolution of DivorceNational Affairs, 2011nationalaffairs.com