Plain Language Translations of American Divorce Law
153the forms mandatorily acceptable and most attorneys would use those
forms. Many courts began to develop their own forms, replacing those that
had been commercially developed. The forms help to distill the legal
concepts involved in the case and also lay out the presentation in a logical
order—specifically, the order needed to list the facts required to answer
the legal issues of the case, which are called the elements of the case,
needed to prove the case to the judge. Of course, these forms are replete
with specialist language.
Further disrupting the process of the application of American divorce
law is the fact that 65 percent of the people in the United States seeking
divorce are not represented by an attorney. Approximately 50 percent of
the people who file for divorce are not represented, and about 80 percent
of those who have to respond to the filings are not represented. These large
numbers have come about relatively recently. They started in the 1980s
and reached nearly to the current numbers in the late 1990s.
There are two factors that seem most prominent in creating this pattern.
First is the movement by state legislatures away from fault divorce,
wherein one of the parties has to be adjudged as causing the break-up of
the marriage through some tortious act, such as adultery or abandonment,
to no-fault divorce. No-fault divorce enables couples to get divorced
without having to provide evidence and testimony of the elements of the
tortious act, thus eliminating much of the need to have a skilled attorney
present the evidence in the case. Some states still require a finding of
irreconcilable differences, but that is now usually met by requiring the
parties to seek counseling or mediation prior to completing the divorce.
Even that is often being eliminated by court order when the judge
determines that there is no dispute about the facts of the case, thus saving
the parties, and perhaps more importantly, the court, time and money.
Anyone seeking a divorce in the United States can get one. The disputes
come over how the two parties will interact with each other subsequent to
the divorce, including the financial aspects and, if children are involved,
the subsequent decisions needed regarding their welfare.
The second factor is the increased cost of hiring a lawyer. The cost of
hiring a lawyer has risen faster than the cost-of-living (as measured by the
U.S. Consumer Price Index) since the 1980s. More importantly, the cost
has risen much faster than average wages. Partly, this is due to the fact that
the increasing economy has increased wealth mostly in the upper classes,
while the middle classes’ incomes have remained flat. The cost of doing
business as a lawyer has increased, but another effect is simply that a
smaller portion of new lawyers become family law lawyers because other
fields of law, whether corporate and business law or plaintiff law (tort and