A Proposal to Reduce Unnecessary Divorce - Razorplanet

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divorce was determined by multiplying the percentage difference from the average by
1,100,000 children who go through a parental divorce each year. We are aware that
social and economic differences among states contribute to different divorce rates.
However, we see nothing inevitable about today’s disproportionately high rates of divorce
in some states. They may have to work harder because they have more couples
at risk.
9. Benjamin Scafidi, principal investigator, The Taxpayer Costs of Divorce and Unwed
Childbearing: First-Ever Estimates for the Nation and All Fifty States, co-published
by the Georgia Family Council, Families Northwest, the Institute for Marriage and
Public Policy, and the Institute for American Values (New York: Institute for American
Values, 2008), http://familyscholars.org/2008/04/15/the-taxpayer-costs-of-divorce-andunwed-childbearing/.
10. David G. Schramm, “Individual and Social Costs of Divorce in Utah,” Journal
of Family and Consumer Issues 27, no. 1 (April 2006): 133, 151. It is difficult to estimate
the public costs of divorce precisely. Both Scafidi and Schramm attempted to err
on the conservative estimate side.
11. See William J. Doherty, Brian J. Willoughby, and Bruce Peterson, “Interest in
Marital Reconciliation among Divorcing Parents,” Family Court Review 49, no. 2 (April
2011): 313–21.
12. Nestor C. Kohut, ed., Therapeutic Family Law: A Complete Guide to Marital
Reconciliations (Chicago: Adams Press, 1968). See also, Jay Folberg, Ann L. Milne,
and Peter Salem, “The Evolution of Divorce and Family Mediation: An Overview,” in
Divorce and Family Mediation: Models, Techniques, and Applications, ed. Jay Folberg,
Ann L. Milne, and Peter Salem (New York: Guilford Press, 2004). For the history of the
Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, see www.afccnet.org/about/history.asp.
13. Association of Family and Conciliation Courts, About AFCC, “History,” www.
afccnet.org/about/history.asp.
14. Two prominent textbooks in the field are Folberg, Milne, and Salem, Divorce
and Family Mediation, and Pauline H. Tessler, Collaborative Law (Washington, DC:
American Bar Association 2001). There have been individual practitioners with an interest
in reconciliation, but until recently little systematic effort in the legal profession
or among mediators.
15. Judge Peterson then invited University of Minnesota researchers William
Doherty and Brian J. Willoughby to explore this issue with him, beginning with conversations
with a group of interested divorce lawyers. Although fully committed to a
constructive, non-adversarial divorce process, these lawyers believed that by the time
couples entered the legal divorce process, they had abandoned hope for their marriage
and would have no interest in reconciliation assistance. Even in the common
scenario where one spouse wants to preserve the marriage, the other surely does