An Insane Missouri Law Prevents Pregnant Women From Getting Divorced—Even If They’re Victims of Domestic Violence
vanityfair.com
State representative Ashley Aune is trying to fight it, but doesn’t have high hopes.
Something you might have picked up on over the last several weeks/years/centuries is that there are a disturbing number of people in power who will go to great lengths to control women in America. Not convinced? Thinking of citing the fact that in some countries, women are stoned to death (as though that makes what happens here okay)? Then we’d like to make you aware of a law in Missouri that says pregnant women cannot get a divorce finalized if they’re pregnant—even if said pregnant people are victims of domestic violence.
Honestly, the rules and laws on divorce are so wild across the country. I was married in California but my husband left after 6 months. I hadn't see him in 9 or 10 years, had no idea where he was.
Because I was in the state of Kentucky when I filed, I had to go to a church run "divorce education class" on how to save my marriage and complete a little workbook.
Completely insane class, I stayed in the back and tried to stay silent, but the teacher forced me to participate and asked some leading question about how I could communicate better with my spouse to prevent a divorce or some shit.
Told her I had no idea where my spouse was, that he had left after 6 months and that I had to hire a private investigator (and a police officer!) to serve my divorce papers. The whole thing was nuts.
Okay, but have you tried praying to Jesus for salvation? Like, really tried? I don't think you tried hard enough, sweetie. I'm going to fail you and make you repeat the class.
I'm sorry you had to go through that.
OBVIOUSLY he's just playing hard to get because you don't spend enough time cooking and bathing him. It's actually your fault and if you accept sky Daddy hard enough he'll come running back.
Horrific
Male or female, what other purpose could a law like this serve except to give abusers a route to legally trap their victim?
To stop fathers abandoning the family when the wife gets pregnant and using a loophole to get out of child support.
Last time this came up on Lemmy there was a comment saying that's where the law came from originally.
It doesn't stop you separating during pregnancy, just to complete the divorce you have to wait till after the birth.
How would that time actually prevent the scenario you described? You don't have to be married to be a father.
I think some comments were saying it's because of how laws used to work of assuming (to a certain degree) fatherhood of the husband in a marriage. I.e., in a time before DNA testing, if the father divorces while his wife is pregnant, then once the baby is born he's out of the picture and escaped responsibility, but after the birth, his responsibility as father has to be discussed as part of the divorce settlement. (Other comments in this thread and before, had more detail, and some commenters seemed to have looked things up and know what they're talking about!)
Another comment said it stops the mother from skipping out on the father and denying him joint custody/etc. Again, due to legal frameworks around marriage and family especially from a time before DNA testing. Obviously you (should) still have courts that can get involved to resolve cases that don't fit the normal framework.
Another brought up more detail of just settling the divorce terms appropriately. I know the baby (in some countries at least) is not a legal person until born: so for some other parts of legal structure (other than this divorce issue), people involved can be aware there is a baby on the way, but the law has to wait until the birth to actually account for that new person.
One point I didn't see mentioned, but that I can imagine, is that pregnancy is a time of new stress and much change, which could push one or other partner to divorce rashly and regret it later. As others pointed out, you can still separate, just not finalise the legal divorce. Then after the birth you have time to see if you want to be together as a family again, or if you do indeed want a divorce.
For those who don't have time to read the title or the article:
Missouri insane
Its a two way street. Men cant get divorced either.
It's there on the books due to child custody issues. A wife who's married and gives birth has the husband put in as the father. If unmarried, a woman can put in "unknown" as the father and take away all of his rights to see his kid or have anything to do with his child until a nice lengthy and costly amount of court, which gets even more difficult if the mom leaves the state.
So short version is that the law prevents one parent from trying to prevent the other parent from having any form of child custody.
Brother, this law is just deranged. Trapping people in a marriage is not OK.
Divorce includes agreements over custody, why not consider an expected child into that as well?
Because nothing stops a woman from writing in "unknown" on the birth certificate. There's also no "trap" of keeping a person into a marriage. It's not the 1800's. Being married or not doesn't change virtually anything you can do.
Then make a law to fix that instead!!! What kind of logic is this???
That'd be fine, too. I'm just saying it's a bit of a dumb law to go after because being married an extra 9 months or less doesn't really limit much of anything besides being able to marry someone else. It's close to a non issue. Some people never even mess with doing the paperwork and just stay separated for years on end.
Being married gives you the ability to make medical decisions among other issues.
Only if you can't make them yourself (like you're in a coma) and you have the ability to give anyone else you want a medical, financial, or both power of attorney for those decisions. The default is your spouse only if you don't have a POA set up. It can be done with a signature and a notary. You can print out the documents for free and have it all done in 15 minutes. Your bank will notarize things for you for free. Otherwise it may cost you like $10.
So, when you're in your coma, how do you tell the hospital that your POA exists?
You can let your medical insurance put it on file and so long as the hospital has your name, it will be known and they would contact your mom or sibling or whoever you made your POA. A hospital will see that information long before figuring out who your spouse you separated from is.
So why not change the law to, when getting a divorce during pregnancy you have to sign a paper promising he is the official dad and let them divorce anyway?
I mean I get that it's not up to the victim to decide if the guy is capable of being a father, there's other systems in place for that. But you just can't lock someone up with a partner they don't want in any circumstance.
Probably nothing.
At what cost?
Filing and forcing paternity tests isn't free. Especially if they've left the state. Many times you'll have to pay a lawyer to process and get it done. Plus you have to find where they're at to start the legal process. In the mean time you can go months without getting to see your child.
This is insane! I'm so confused about why a pregnancy and a divorce have to be mutually exclusive. What was this intended to prevent? Other than the obvious reason of controlling women.
I guess you can make an argument that a pregnant woman isn't of sound mind, but I think it's more about ensuring parenthood is established outside the divorce process.
Can't read the entire article. Is this something new?
Arizona, Arkansas, Missouri, and Texas. Lawmakers claim it's to prevent issues with things like child support, visitation, etc, before paternity can be established. This article does a pretty good job summarizing the situations:
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2024/02/28/pregnant-women-divorce-missouri-texas-arkansas-arizona/72763848007/
Paternity tests can be done during pregnancy...
I'm a paralegal, and Wisconsin is the same. We had a headache in one case a couple years ago where nobody knew the other party was pregnant, not even her attorney, until the final hearing and she was asked the generic question about pregnancy before finalizing. We then had to do a partial final judgment and schedule another final hearing a couple of months after her expected due date to fully finalize it.
Most contested divorces take more than nine months anyways, and you don't need a divorce to separate and get into a safe space. Typically separation happens before the legal process starts, and even if you wanted to get remarried there is an intermediate 'bifurcation' step which can end the marriage legally before the divorce is finalized.
This is just a legal convenience for the court, but who doesn't love a little rage bait?
I can't even imagine how many things being legally married to someone who isn't your partner would influence. From how you fill out taxes, to emergency contact forms, to power of attorney, to immigration sponsorship. A child should not be a weapon to keep people married together and if that means a tiny bit more work for some civil servant in a weird black dress then so be it.
Bullshit, this gives abusers direct influence over their victims' lives. It isn't "ragebait".
Law is from 1973 and was amended in 2016.
I was hoping it was some old bullshit on the books nobody looks at anymore. Do people tho? I have been here in MO my whole life and this is the first ive heard of this. Is it something they actually enforce?
It sounds like this it is actively preventing people from getting divorced.
Yay. Another fucking reason to hate this shit hole state.
Hey we have some pretty parks though 😭
And the USA is supposed to be a first world country?
Oh no it's not, it hasn't been that for a while. Some states may look like it, but some are straight up third world.
First world country only if you're in a certain percentage of income.
By original definition, USA is a first world country because they supported the USA and other Western countries in the cold war: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/first-world.asp
This is common. In Tennessee, a judge won't divorce you if pregnant because it would effectively bastardize the child. By statute, there is a presumption that husband is dad if wife is impregnated during marriage. You can't divorce without a parenting plan. So you have to wait until birth to rebut the parentage presumption. I had a client try to get around it by requesting a test of the amniotic fluid, but the judge wouldn't allow it because of the potential harm to the child.
It's probably more about preventing the state from becoming liable to help the child than anything about bastards.
"Bastardize" is a term of art, essentially meaning having no legal father at birth. The whole reason the state cares about preventing bastards is because they typically require more state services than non-bastardized children.
Hmmm. State is trying to live up to it's name, and make people live in misery.
Possibly related note: Jesus's rules on divorce do not permit a woman to leave an abusive marriage.
Depending on which gospel you're reading a man may either leave an adulterous wife(Matthew)or not under any circumstances(mark, luke).
It's a bit annoying that they wrote it up so literally decades after he was dead.
Dude was also allegedly regularly referring to death and the afterlife using marriage metaphors of bridegrooms and bridal suites.
But yeah, the idea divorce is impossible had to do with actual marriage and not the whole 'dying' part.
(Though I suppose the sect that believed a dead body came back as opposed to the sects that denied physical resurrection would have preferred interpreting it as referring to actual marriage and not death...)
It took a while to create a myth from scratch. Go read the early Batman and Superman comics, you can see how they struggled. In any case the restricted divorce rules probably came from Paul and the author of Mark's pathetic attempts to read the OT Song of songs and Zeke 29.
How do you think Song of Songs or Ezekiel 29 relate to the divorce prohibition?
The erotica was reimagined and partially rewritten as an analogy for the relationship between Israel and God. In that context the idea of divorce becomes a seperation from God. Paul is not a fan of divorce unless of course the partner wasn't a member of the church i.e. they were commiting adultery against God. He repurposed baptism to make it part of the marriage to Christ which wasn't a big leap since Judaism already had a ritual like baptism prior to getting married. Then he flattened humanity, telling people that all were equally the same to the son of god making it acceptable for higher class, lower class, males, slaves, and all ethnic groups to be married to the same person.
All these vague ideas merged later when the Gospel writers needed to fill in the plot.
Citation needed por favor.
Sermon on the Mount. It is right there in Matthew. Most famous speech he supposedly gave.
If you are curious both it and the Sermon on the plain probably came from the same document that is lost to us.
Matthew 5? Yeah, it doesn't say that.
Sure. I've read it. You may want to take a look into what divorce and adultery meant in First Century Judea.
Not sure why I would considering that the man who wrote that gospel wasn't from there and wasn't of that religious group. Especially considering that "look at the context" is something only done by non-religious who haven't yet finished cutting ties with their birth religion and is never a demand that the religious honor.
But yeah go right ahead. Explain how divorce and adultery really means exactly what you want it to me in "context".
Sorry, 0 for 2 (or 3--you're probably wrong about the author of Matthew too). Some folks are deeply religious and care a great deal about context and history, but something tells me you already know that.
The books are deeply flawed, but if you want to criticize them, you have to bother to read and understand them first. Making shit up because you have a chip on your shoulder doesn't advance your position. All it does is prove the assumption of religious people, wise and ignorant alike, that you will readily lie if it serves your aim to paint their faith in a negative light.
When you engage in bad faith, you shouldn't be alarmed when someone calls you on it, and it should come as no shock that people aren't going to want to spend time correcting your errors.
Yeah yeah I suck, get in line and take a number.
Noticed that can't actually find a way to make the word divorce not be divorce and the word adultery not be adultery? A three paragraph rant about how much I suck with zero reference to the text or the supposed context of the text.
So glad I signed up to vote this year. Missouri I'm disappointed in you so much right now
As an AFAB Missourian I'm fucking terrified.
Missouri is a toilet bowl!
A few years ago, right before the pandemic in fact, I came very close to moving to Missouri.
At the time, turning the job down because of the incredibly low final offer was one of the hardest things I'd ever done.
Ended up finding a much better job and moving back to my home town in a decidedly blue state, really dodged a bullet on that one.
Horrifying. Fucking barbaric shit you see in other countries where women have no rights.
Ohhh the Missouri~
Everyone wants to be, their eneemy~
marriage is a complicated mess of a contract that married people don't usually understand. it's not consistent across state lines and the number of absurd legal situations it can lead to is crazy
I swear, marriage would be easier dealt with if both parties opted to incorporate a business, and put their relevant assets in the name of the corporation. Then at least separation would be pretty clean cut and dry. The Irony is - this is basically what marriage is.
No, marriage has a few more important rights, ranging from being able to make certain important medical decisions for the other (e.g. life support related) to being able to refuse to testify against each other.
Slavery
Someone explain to me again how wanting to crush radical fascist talk radio saturation is bad because "free speech".
If all other perspectives are suppressed for any reason including profitability you can STFU
World looking at the United States: shaking head
Once again, everyone going off after reading the headline.
The law merely states that the divorce cannot be finalized if the woman is pregnant. And that makes sense. Questions of paternity, child support, visitation, etc., must be part of the final divorce decree.
Would you rather the woman get a final judgement that lacks answers to the questions above? And again, nothing here traps the woman. She can leave. She can file for divorce. Proceedings can begin.
And yet in most states, a pregnant woman can get a divorce finalized somehow.
Why?
That's crazy and so unfair that men can't get divorced if their wives are pregnant, even if they're being domestically abused.
Oh wait. It isn't allowed to be seen or hated for looking at it from that direction. This is more gendered stereotyping, inferring that only women are being abused and want out of a bad relationship.
The main basis behind this law is that right now if you're married and give birth, the husband's name gets put in/assumed as the father. A woman who isn't married can put down unknown as a father and make it more difficult for the father to have rights for their child. Getting a divorce while pregnant is only really needed as a custody grab for a woman to try and keep her child away from the other parent by not putting them on the birth certificate.
There's not much else you can't do when married that you can do when you're single. You can still move out, you can still date, you can't be arrested and brought back to your spouse, you can still open bank accounts. All it really benefits is being used as a tool against sharing custody if a child.
This person is living on mars.
Or he’s just fucking stupid.
This is a bizarre false equivalency. Yes, men get abused in relationships, no the numbers aren't equal, and no-where in this article does it say men can't suffer from this insane law.
She brought this forward specifically because a woman came to her in this situation. Men can go and protest this as well, but the story is about the woman who approached Aune. This bullshit where any time a woman complains about something unfair means some asshat has to jump in going "men too men too men too!"
NOBODY HAS SAID MEN DON'T SUFFER THIS SHIT. You're making a strawman.
Being married doesn't stop anyone from leaving a relationship, getting a job, moving anywhere they want, or opening a bank account. The only things it does in the short term of less than a year is prevent you from getting married to another. There isn't a separate set of abuse laws if you're married or single.
The only reason for needing a divorce on less than 9 months notice while pregnant is to try and remove custody for a child from a man. That's almost the only reason. To make it hard for a father to see their child. To make a father spend months and thousands of dollars just so they can see their own kid.
So go ahead and tell me WHY it is important to get a divorce in less than 9 months. What is a reason to need to do it?
Ok.
What if the woman was raped? What if he removed a condom during sex? What if the realization she'd be bringing a child into a relationship with a physically and emotionally abusive person made her realize she had to get out?
I don't know what point you think you're making but you look like an absolute monster here.
Being married isn't a hindrance or stopping point to any of the things you've mentioned.
That's insulting to Martians!
Yeah. Go ahead and explain how? Go ahead and say why people need to get divorced over a 9 month or less period. Explain how it hurts women more than men or vice versa.
Explain why getting divorced less than nine months earlier changes a single thing, you brainless twit.
Or, how about citing one example of this preventing a man from filing divorce. Just one will do.
I did explain what it changes. Getting divorced means the man loses his child until he can force a paternity test through the court system.
I think the points you are making are fair. Interesting that you are getting so many downvotes. 🤔
Lemmy/reddit swings hard on hive mind and is very black and white on topics. Anything to appear anti lgbtq or against minorities or women's life just gets an automatic "bad".
But yeah. Being married doesn't really do all that much. You don't need a husband's permission to do anything on your own anymore. The only reason a pregnant woman has to get a divorce while pregnant is to make it hard on the husband to have parental rights.
Maybe you could keep in mind that this state also had trigger laws banning abortion as soon as roe was overturned. The stakes are much fucking higher for people that can get pregnant.
Being married or divorced doesn't change that, though.
It doesn't? Who gets to make medical decisions if she can't while delivering the baby? Maybe Daddy is willing to risk losing a woman he is divorcing anyhow but wants the baby. Or maybe she is going to travel out of state for an abortion and he gets the idea that can be used against her in court.
I legit do not understand any woman who is fertile living in a state like that. Just knowing that a clump of cells has more rights than she does.
The husband doesn't have any rights during delivery and isn't allowed to be in the delivery room without the moms permission.
Beyond that, and in the event of emergencies where the spouse cannot make their own medical decisions, if they know they don't want their partner they've separated from able to make any on their behalf, you can choose at any time in your life who has medical power of attorney in those situations. It's free to do except for paying a notary (your bank will usually notarize for free) and the bit of paperwork takes like 10 minutes. Give who you made the medical poa a copy, and have your primary care physicians office place another with your medical records.
Consider if you will that pregnancy is a state of extreme vulnerability. The chances of being killed by a parter are astronomically higher for pregnant people... With the case of a lot of insurance, banking policies and economic infrastructure is designed to enable spouses to be treated as a single person any property you acquire is by default mutually owned meaning there's all manner of control which can be exerted by a spouse. You cannot file taxes separately and kinship treats your spouse as both your automatic inheritor and a legal authority with power of attorney in the event of you are incapacitated so you have someone that you cannot fully escape from because of legal ties. If you fear for your life from someone any contact is too much.
Considering too that it relatively common for men who were not previously abusive to suddenly change their personality, dropping their masks abruptly once someone is essentially trapped into having their baby then not giving someone the ability to extracate themselves from this situation is creating incentive to put on these deceptions. In the matter of childbearing the risk is borne only by one partner. It would stand to reason that if a non bearing partner causes an undue increase in the risks during the most vulnerable stages of pregnancy that they default on both their responsibilities and privileges as a parent.
Critically in a very short term divorce proceeding you do have to prove to a court cruelty or adultery which means obtaining reasonable proof these things exist. If your partner is proven cruel or a cheater then really are they worth defending their custody so vehemently? Most no fault divorce state requirements require a mutual separation period well beyond the gestation period of pregnancy (one year is the most common) . Even if you timed a separation so that you got pregnant right at the beginning of starting the clock that baby would be three months old before you would be eligible to divorce.