Maryland and divorce

July 14, 8:32 PMBaltimore County Liberal ExaminerBruce Godfrey

Maryland has relatively strict divorce laws.  Not only must a married couple ordinarily live separate and apart for 12 months to get divorced, but "separate and apart" means different abodes.  Even living in the same house behind separate locked doors on different floors doesn't qualify.  One of the effects of this is to make divorce more expensive and longer than it need be - not just from the length itself, but from the starvation of cash flow to move on.  If people can stay in the same house while they divorce, they can save more for a better launch.  Similarly, if the process is quicker, people can move on.  

I admit to a personal bias on the matter, having attended a divorce hearing as a party last week after about 20 months of (pre-)divorce.

There have been a few proposals to bring the "waiting period" in MD down from 1 year to more tolerable durations.  In DC it's six months.  In Guam, it's one week's mere presence with a separation agreement - a move designed, I am certain, with the economic health of the bars and beaches of Guam in mind.  

I am becoming more convinced that the entire matter shouldn't be turned over to private hands.   People should be able to set up the legal trappings of marriage, if they must exist in our jurisprudence, with the same ease that they set up a limited liability company: pay the fee and fax in the papers.  Let ecclesiastical bodies or other private entities hold or withhold whatever ceremonies they want, as they can now absolutely.

I was told yesterday by a respected attorney - have not had a chance to confirm this report - that as much as half of the dockets of some Circuit Courts in Maryland may be domestic or family law cases of some sort, and of those half have at least one unrepresented party.  This is not a recipe for efficient justice in family law or other matters.

Some cite Maryland's Catholic history as the reason for its conservative divorce laws, but this is not historically well-founded.  Maryland's Catholic Church was disestablished in favor of the Protestant Episcopal Church in colonial times; even today the Maryland Vestry Act technically names the Governor of Maryland as the "head" of the Protestant Episcopal Church here, I am told, and that church's Anglican "parent" was founded in part in reaction to royal oppoisition to strict divorce prohibitions in the Catholic Church.  Maryland's Catholic population is proportionately the same as in America as a whole: about 23-24%, lower than Pennsylvania's, lower than in any New England state or many Mid-Western states.  Many of these states have more liberal divorce laws than does the largely liberal, diverse and Protestant state of Maryland.