State Power Over The Innocent

AN ARGUMENT AGAINST NO-FAULT DIVORCE

P1. No-fault divorce allows the state to knowingly punish an innocent party

P2. Society should not permit anything which allows the state to knowingly punish an innocent party

C. Therefore society should not permit no-fault divorce


CONSERVATIVE COMMENTARY

Stephen Baskerville said:

[Y]ou can be forcibly separated from your children, your home, and your property, also through literally “no fault” of your own. Failure to cooperate with the divorce opens the innocent spouse to criminal penalties. No-fault divorce made divorce far more destructive by allowing the state to undertake court proceedings against innocent people, confiscate everything they have, and incarcerate them without trial.

https://www.crisismagazine.com/2008/five-myths-about-no-fault-divorce

Or in stronger terms:

“What is taking place here should be made very clear: Citizens who are completely innocent of any legal wrongdoing and simply minding their own business–not seeking any litigation and neither convicted nor accused of any legal infraction, criminal or civil–are ordered into court and told to write checks to officials of the court or they will be summarily arrested and jailed, Judges also order citizens to sell their houses and other property and turn the proceeds over to lawyers and other cronies they never hired. Summoning legally unimpeachable citizens to court and forcing them to empty their bank accounts to people they have not hired for services they have neither requested nor received on threat of physical punishment is what most people would call a protection racket. . . Yet family court judges do this as a matter of routine. This is by far the clearest example of what we political scientists term a “kleptocracy,” or government by thieves.”
Taken Into Custody: The War Against Fathers, Marriage, and the Family