No-fault divorce OK'd in state Senate, moves to Assembly

New York, the last state in the nation without a no-fault divorce law, has taken its biggest step in decades toward adopting one, as a package of bills moves to the Assembly after passing the Senate.

The legislation passed Tuesday in the Senate would allow divorce without a finding of wrongdoing such as adultery or cruelty, if one spouse testifies that the marriage has "broken down irretrievably for a period of at least six months," and all financial and custody issues have been resolved.

Backed by the New York State Bar Association, the Women's Bar Association of the State of New York and many Legal Aid groups, the measure has 68 co-sponsors in the Assembly and is to be taken up by the Judiciary Committee before the session ends this month, according to its prime sponsor, Assemb. Jonathan Bing (D-Manhattan). But the New York State Catholic Conference opposes the measure, saying it undermines the institution of marriage, while the National Organization for Women of New York State said it would erode protections for victims of domestic violence.

"Women senators dance as they throw women and children under the bus," NOW charged in a release Wednesday.

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan) told reporters, "I support the concept" of no-fault divorce. "I'm talking to members of the conference as to details of how it gets accomplished."

Proponents of no-fault divorce long have deplored the existing law, saying it has driven generations of amicably divorcing New York couples to either make up lurid falsehoods on the stand or leave the state. Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan), a co-sponsor, said she herself had been trapped in a marriage in the 1980s until her husband moved to Ohio, a no-fault state.

California was the first state to adopt no-fault divorce in 1970 and the rest have followed. But in New York State, women's rights groups joined conservatives and Catholics to oppose the change, and Republicans blocked it in the Senate.

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"Children of divorce tend to suffer many negative consequences throughout their lives, from lower educational achievement rates to higher rates of substance abuse, criminal behavior and imprisonment," Catholic Conference executive director Richard Barnes said Wednesday, arguing for the current law, which allows divorce after a one-year legal separation.

But after decades in which feminists argued New York's law gave financially dependent wives and their children more power in a disintegrating marriage, the Women's Bar Association in recent years concluded it merely prolongs their suffering.

"The current law has a Draconian impact on victims of domestic violence who will not leave New York State without their children and who cannot afford to move or to litigate fault," the group said Wednesday.

Notably, NOW's New York City chapter Wednesday said it supports two other bills in the package that establish guidelines for division of income and prompter payment of the dependent spouse's legal fees.

With James T. Madore