SELFISH INTENTIONS - K-REx - Kansas State University

CHAPTER 3 - Concerns about Liberal Divorce Law
Statistics compiled by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics showed that women were the
primary petitioners for divorce in Kansas. During the forty-year period from 1867 to 1906,
Kansas women petitioned the court 25,334 out of the total number of 36,094 or 70.2% of the
cases petitioned. The number one cause for divorce was abandonment. 46.5% of the divorce
cases in Kansas were filed based on the ground of abandonment. Of the divorces filed by
women, 40.9% of them filed on the basis of abandonment. The second highest ground for
divorce was cruelty, a charge made in 18.8% of the divorce cases. 23.5% of the cases filed by
women used cruelty as the reason behind the petition. 98 These statistics show that the state of
Kansas along with other western states had a problem with men abandoning their wives and
families. Since society in the west was more fluid than on the east coast men could simply walk
away from their marriages. In many cases, women would be left destitute after their husband
abandoned them; therefore, they needed the support of the court system in order to retain their
rights to certain property, in order to remarry to keep their family in tact, or to retain custody of
their children.
Following the 1909 changes in the state statute, lawyers found that one change in the
statutes could possibly lead to an increase in divorces in Kansas. The statute in question was
section 664 which required the plaintiff to be a resident in good faith of the state for at least one
year preceding the filing of the petition. The statute further required that the plaintiff be a
resident of the county in which the legal action was adjudicated. These requirements were
retained from the previous statutes; however, following these requirements the statute read,
98 Wright, 103-105.
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