> Perhaps we should be looking at other approaches to the problem of unhappy marriages, in particular the due diligence of people in choosing their partners - e

> Perhaps we should be looking at other approaches to the problem of unhappy marriages, in particular the due diligence of people in choosing their partners - especially when there are children involved or intended. As someone who's been through a divorce, I think this is the wrong perspective. The law should always be considered a backstop for when other solutions fail, not a first solution to aim for. For instance, if you have a disagreement with your neighbor about a fence or a tree or something, you should always go and talk to them first. If you're a business and have a disagreement about the contract with some other business, you should always go and try to sort it out without lawyers first. Making it possible to sue your neighbor or your business partner when discussion fails to produce results doesn't mean that you're "trivializing neighborhood relations". Well-written and consistently-applied laws means, ideally, that when you have those conversations with your neighbor or your business partner, you never end up going to court, because everyone knows exactly what's going to happen. The law in the UK is already written to try to encourage people to save their marriage: In the absence of adultery or physical abuse, you can generally only file for a divorce after you've been separated for 2 years; and this includes provisions for short stints of living together to give it a second chance. (E.g., if you separate for 6 months, come back together for 3 months, and then separate again, the "clock" doesn't start over, and you can file for divorce after another 15 months.) By the time that people move out, the relationship is almost always in a really bad state; and by the time you've lived separately for 2 years, there's almost zero chance you're going to get back together. At that point what you have is no longer a marriage, and the divorce proceedings is only recognizing legally what has already happened relationally. I mean, yes, we as a society should also be trying to prevent disaster-in-waiting marriages from happening; and should be investing time trying to strengthen marriages -- even marriages which are relatively stable. Making divorce difficult won't save marriages, but it does add all kinds of perverse incentives. If you have to prove adultery or abuse to file, then suddenly you have to bring in private investigators to spy on people, and sling around reputation-destroying accusations in public, making the whole thing a lot more nasty.