SELFISH INTENTIONS - K-REx - Kansas State University

had availed themselves of the quickest American divorce procedure: simply walking away. Yet
Kansas law provided protections for women that made these cases considerably less traumatic
than they might have been, and in both cases, a woman was able to use liberal divorce law to
retain financial security without a husband. In addition, it appears that neither Mrs. Selts nor
Mrs. Holtzgang was socially penalized for their actions. They remained successful
businesswomen after their divorce because their community accepted their divorces.
The legal statutes in Kansas remained the same from 1868 until 1909. In 1909, the
legislature decided it needed to revise the statutes. In the 1909 statutes, grounds for divorce
remained the same as previously written in 1868. However, the legislature strengthened the
subsequent qualifications and procedures for a divorce. In particular, the legislature added a
section to the statute that addressed the property of the wife. While the 1868 statutes noted that a
wife could be restored to her maiden name and her husband may be required to pay alimony, it
did not address the property that the wife either brought into the marriage or obtained during the
marriage. The 1909 statute provided:
When a divorce shall be granted by reason of the fault or aggression of the
husband, the wife shall be restored to her maiden name if she so desires, and also
to all the property, lands, tenements, hereditaments owned by her before her
marriage or acquired by her in her own right after such marriage, and not
previously disposed of, and shall be allowed such alimony out of the husband’s
real and personal property as the court shall think reasonable, having due regard
to the property which came to him by marriage and the value of his real and
personal estate at the time of said divorce; …payable either in gross or in
installments, as the court may deem just and equitable. 97
97 State of Kansas Session Laws 1909, Chapter 182, Article 28, Section 673.
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