The Broken Family : Part 3

The Family and it's Members
by Anna Garlin Spencer

(Page 15 of 19)

Prohibition of Paid Attorneys in Divorce. - The absolute abolition of any paid service of any attorney in the interest of getting anyone a divorce, is a primary social demand. The establishment of a "Divorce Proctor" service in a Domestic Relations Court, with sole jurisdiction over applications for divorce, is a second vital social demand. Some form of legal provision which would make judges of a special and honored class the paid representatives of society's demand for marriage to be as permanent as individual justice will allow is essential to any genuine divorce reform. The often highly-feed advocate of personal wish of two dissatisfied people, the agent that deals with divorce problems as a lucrative trade, is one cause of the prevalence of divorce among the idle and pampered rich. Those who have greater social opportunity than they have brains or conscience to use them aright, and who can pay lawyers so extravagantly, give us a heavy total of marital separations and of remarriage of divorced persons in the United States.

Judges, the best and the wisest, must sit on all cases where the breaking up of a family is the issue, and all privately paid attorneys (in other kinds of social arrangement and difficulty also a hindrance rather than an aid to justice) must be banished from every divorce court and from every divorce proceeding, both of the richer and of the poorer classes.

Divorce Proceedings Should be Heard in Secret. - Newspapers should not be tempted or allowed to gain advantage from the weakness, the folly, or the vice of any member of any family which may be revealed in such divorce proceedings. The fact of whether or not a divorce applied for is granted, the fact of whether one or the other party or both have received freedom, the fact of whether one or another was pronounced guilty of treason to the marriage bond - these are all subjects for news. The reasons for these decisions of wise and good judges should not be given to the public in detail. The main objections to the present publicity of divorce proceedings is, first, that publicity is generally in proportion to the wealth of the parties, as is also the prolongation of the proceedings; and second, that such reports are generally of a demoralizing nature for the public to read; and third, and not least, that few if any couples seeking a divorce are without fathers or mothers or relatives, children, or near friends, to whom the public revelation of the marital unhappiness or the personal wrong-doing of the parties involved is a pain and a shame.

Earlier and Better Use of Domestic Relations Court. - Another way by which society should undertake to supply in newer and more democratic forms the supervision, the control, and the support to the individual married couple and their children, which the older collective family organization sought to supply, is an earlier and a better use of the Domestic Relations Court, or of some advisory agency to prevent the breaking up of families. There should be something analogous to the old "family council," some body of advisers well known and well equipped for actual service, to help the bewildered and the unhappy. The religious ministry should be able to supply such help. It often does do so. The circle of friends may sometimes contain those of wisdom and understanding who give needed aid toward a resumption of broken relations on a higher and more enduring plane. There is needed, however, something between the court to which people go for relief from bonds, and the solitary struggle with difficulties before that relief is sought, something which, if related officially to the Domestic Relations Court, would be of a more flexible and private nature than most of its proceedings. We need more an aid to avoidance of marital rocks than a rescue, as from a life-boat, after the shipwreck.

There are many forms of advice and help which the teachers and medical practitioners in mental hygiene are now developing and offering which may be used later on, when we are wiser, in this work of preventing families from breaking up. Regularly constituted "social doctoring" for the prevention, even more than for the treatment of social disease as it manifests itself in family life, is surely called for.

The Children to be Affected Society's Chief Care. - Above all, we must place the children affected by any decision that gives society a broken family in the front rank of interest and of protective care. If the paid attorney were eliminated, divorces would certainly be lessened in number. If publicity were avoided in all divorce proceedings, much of the harm to children arising from separation of married couples would be avoided. If, in addition, there were advisory aid to the confused and unhappy, many now drifting to complete division of interest and affection would be enabled to start on again toward better realization of married opportunity. If, in further addition, the Domestic Relations Courts were changed with the supervisory care of all children whose parents were legally separated, and the well-being of those children made the chief legal concern even if it required the complete separation from both father and mother, more fathers and mothers would hesitate to place themselves where their parental control and their parental influence would be so minimized. Yet who doubts that among the rich as well as among the poor such judicial protection and care of the children, whom the broken family leaves without true parental care, is needed? To give children into the hands of either parent alone is in many such cases no fitting substitute for the normal home influence. In any case, there should be an external conscience and an external solicitude enlisted in the interest of every child whose parents have made such a failure of marriage and the home that the divorce court is the only refuge.

This does not ignore the fact that many couples separate to the advantage of the children, that many parents are quite innocent of any cause for the broken family, that many times there is a rehabilitation of the family life on other lines that means full nurture and development for the children. The fact remains, however, that the average child of divorced parents has to meet difficulties and face disadvantages in life which the child of permanently united fathers and mothers does not suffer, and, for such, some exterior protection and supervision should be provided.

A Uniform or Federal Divorce Law. - Many persons deeply interested in lessening the number of divorces in the United States place much dependence upon a "Uniform Divorce Law" for the whole country, as giving a basis for wise legislation. Recently, Senator Jones, of the State of Washington, introduced in the Senate a resolution proposing a new amendment to the Federal Constitution by which, if it passed, Congress would have power "to establish and enforce by appropriate legislation uniform laws as to marriage and divorce." The fact that a couple may be legally married in one state of our Union and illegally practicing bigamy or adultery in another state gives a plausible reason for such a Constitutional Amendment. And perhaps the searching investigation and discussion which would precede such a definite change in our national law, if such change were made, would be of great use in clarifying the public mind, and securing a consensus of opinion as to what should and what should not be allowed in this matter.

Copyright, 1923 by J.B. Lippincott Company

About the Author

Anna Garlin Spencer (1851-1931) was an American educator, feminist, and Unitarian minister. Born in Attleboro, MA, she married the Rev. William H. Spencer in 1878. She was a leader in the women's suffrage and peace movements. In 1891 she became the first woman ordained as a minister in the state of Rhode Island.