State representative Ashley Aune is trying to fight it, but doesn’t have high hopes.
State representative Ashley Aune is trying to fight it, but doesn’t have high hopes.
Something you might have picked up on over the last several weeks/years/centuries is that there are a disturbing number of people in power who will go to great lengths to control women in America. Not convinced? Thinking of citing the fact that in some countries, women are stoned to death (as though that makes what happens here okay)? Then we’d like to make you aware of a law in Missouri that says pregnant women cannot get a divorce finalized if they’re pregnant—even if said pregnant people are victims of domestic violence.
Honestly, the rules and laws on divorce are so wild across the country. I was married in California but my husband left after 6 months. I hadn't see him in 9 or 10 years, had no idea where he was.
Because I was in the state of Kentucky when I filed, I had to go to a church run "divorce education class" on how to save my marriage and complete a little workbook.
Completely insane class, I stayed in the back and tried to stay silent, but the teacher forced me to participate and asked some leading question about how I could communicate better with my spouse to prevent a divorce or some shit.
Told her I had no idea where my spouse was, that he had left after 6 months and that I had to hire a private investigator (and a police officer!) to serve my divorce papers. The whole thing was nuts.
Okay, but have you tried praying to Jesus for salvation? Like, really tried? I don't think you tried hard enough, sweetie. I'm going to fail you and make you repeat the class.
OBVIOUSLY he's just playing hard to get because you don't spend enough time cooking and bathing him. It's actually your fault and if you accept sky Daddy hard enough he'll come running back.
This is insane! I'm so confused about why a pregnancy and a divorce have to be mutually exclusive. What was this intended to prevent? Other than the obvious reason of controlling women.
I guess you can make an argument that a pregnant woman isn't of sound mind, but I think it's more about ensuring parenthood is established outside the divorce process.
Arizona, Arkansas, Missouri, and Texas. Lawmakers claim it's to prevent issues with things like child support, visitation, etc, before paternity can be established. This article does a pretty good job summarizing the situations:
I'm a paralegal, and Wisconsin is the same. We had a headache in one case a couple years ago where nobody knew the other party was pregnant, not even her attorney, until the final hearing and she was asked the generic question about pregnancy before finalizing. We then had to do a partial final judgment and schedule another final hearing a couple of months after her expected due date to fully finalize it.
Most contested divorces take more than nine months anyways, and you don't need a divorce to separate and get into a safe space. Typically separation happens before the legal process starts, and even if you wanted to get remarried there is an intermediate 'bifurcation' step which can end the marriage legally before the divorce is finalized.
This is just a legal convenience for the court, but who doesn't love a little rage bait?
I was hoping it was some old bullshit on the books nobody looks at anymore. Do people tho? I have been here in MO my whole life and this is the first ive heard of this. Is it something they actually enforce?
It's a bit annoying that they wrote it up so literally decades after he was dead.
Dude was also allegedly regularly referring to death and the afterlife using marriage metaphors of bridegrooms and bridal suites.
But yeah, the idea divorce is impossible had to do with actual marriage and not the whole 'dying' part.
(Though I suppose the sect that believed a dead body came back as opposed to the sects that denied physical resurrection would have preferred interpreting it as referring to actual marriage and not death...)
It’s a bit annoying that they wrote it up so literally decades after he was dead.
It took a while to create a myth from scratch. Go read the early Batman and Superman comics, you can see how they struggled. In any case the restricted divorce rules probably came from Paul and the author of Mark's pathetic attempts to read the OT Song of songs and Zeke 29.
This is common. In Tennessee, a judge won't divorce you if pregnant because it would effectively bastardize the child. By statute, there is a presumption that husband is dad if wife is impregnated during marriage. You can't divorce without a parenting plan. So you have to wait until birth to rebut the parentage presumption. I had a client try to get around it by requesting a test of the amniotic fluid, but the judge wouldn't allow it because of the potential harm to the child.
"Bastardize" is a term of art, essentially meaning having no legal father at birth. The whole reason the state cares about preventing bastards is because they typically require more state services than non-bastardized children.
marriage is a complicated mess of a contract that married people don't usually understand. it's not consistent across state lines and the number of absurd legal situations it can lead to is crazy
I swear, marriage would be easier dealt with if both parties opted to incorporate a business, and put their relevant assets in the name of the corporation. Then at least separation would be pretty clean cut and dry. The Irony is - this is basically what marriage is.
No, marriage has a few more important rights, ranging from being able to make certain important medical decisions for the other (e.g. life support related) to being able to refuse to testify against each other.
Once again, everyone going off after reading the headline.
The law merely states that the divorce cannot be finalized if the woman is pregnant. And that makes sense. Questions of paternity, child support, visitation, etc., must be part of the final divorce decree.
Would you rather the woman get a final judgement that lacks answers to the questions above? And again, nothing here traps the woman. She can leave. She can file for divorce. Proceedings can begin.