Sen. Spartz has introduced SB 406 which would mandate marriage counseling prior to a court issuing a final order of dissolution in divorce proceedings where the couple has children. There are exceptions where at least one of the spouses certifies that they’ve been a victim of domestic abuse by the other, the court finds that reconciliation is infeasible, or the court finds other good cause to excuse the counseling. The counseling must be at least two hours long and contain the following content:
(A) Creation of a plan of reconciliation, if feasible.
(B) Education on the effects of divorce on a child’s physical and mental health.
(C) Information on how the parties can minimize the effects of the dissolution of marriage action on the parties’ children.
(D) Provision of referrals to community services for the parties and the parties’ children.
The legislation gestures toward courts entering into agreements with counselors who will waive fees where there is a financial hardship, but my guess is that won’t be especially feasible. I don’t know enough about divorce proceedings or counseling to know for sure, but my guess is that this will mostly be wasted money and effort. If you’re on the brink of finalizing a divorce, I have a hard time believing that a two hour counseling session is going to move the needle very much. Divorce is a huge pain in the ass on its own — people generally aren’t going through the process frivolously. That said, I do like the idea of providing people with information on how to minimize the impact of divorce on the kids and on community resources that can help.
Seems like the state could provide divorce-related training or even just a resource through health and human services without creating a new financial barrier in an already expensive process.
I hope these two hour sessions are done separately. So many couples hate each other during the divorce proceedings putting them in the same room would not work well.
Right on, Guy. Counseling those folks is like trying to turn around a plane from the first class cabin, when it’s on auto pilot aimed at the ground. Locked on.
More social engineering legislation.
Agree with that, Ron, but divorce has a huge social cost to the public and community stability. The divorce industry costs run around $50 billion a year, and the average cost per divorced person is around $3500. Then we start talking about the short and long-term social and psychological costs to the ones who get divorced and the ones (children) who are affected by it.
They should require evidence-based counseling as a requirement when getting a marriage license. There has been a lot of excellent work in this area, to the point where folks can predict divorce after the first five minutes of a conversation, even with couples who are “in love”, but can intervene in those situations. Interesting how people want to spend obscene amounts with the marriage ceremony and related events, but spend so little actually learning how to be married. As any married person will report, marriage is a whole lot more than sex. Requiring divorce counseling when the two are focused on it and when they are actually settled with the decision is after the horses have long left the barn.