No-fault divorce is a divorce in which the dissolution of a marriage does not require a showing of wrongdoing by either party.[1] Laws providing for no-fault divorce allow a family court to grant a divorce in response to a petition by either party of the marriage without requiring the petitioner to provide evidence that the defendant has committed a breach of the marital contract.
California was the first U.S. State to adopt what are now called ‘no-fault’ divorces in the United States in 1969. California’s law was framed on an earlier and roughly contemporaneous effort, of the non-governmental organization, National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, which began drafting a model of no-fault divorce statute for states to consider in 1967.[3]
The earliest precedent in no-fault divorce laws was originally enacted in Russia shortly after the Bolshevik Revolution. They were legislated in the series of decrees that issued in early 1918. The decrees included nonjudicial dissolution of marriage by either party and mandatory provision of child-support.[4] The purpose of the Soviet no-fault divorce laws was ideological, intended to revolutionize society at every level.[5] They were the subject of significant revisional efforts from World War II to the 1960s. Major revisions were concluded in 1968. The Soviet 1968 and California 1969 no-fault divorce laws bore many detailed similarities of terminology, substance, and procedure.[6]
In the 1925 Soviet conference to draft the Family Law of 1926, people debated whether marriages should even be registered. Nikolai Krylenko, a chief architect of the Soviet law of marriage and leading theorist of “socialist legality” in the 1920s and 1930s, described the purpose of divorce without restraint as a step toward the ultimate goal of the abolition of marriage, thereby establishing the socialist transformation of society.
“Of course, if living together and not registration is taken as the test of a married state, polygamy and polyandry may exist; but the State can’t put up any barriers against this. Free love is the ultimate aim of a socialist State; in that State marriage will be free from any kind of obligation, including economic, and will turn into an absolutely free union of two beings. Meanwhile, though our aim is the free union, we must recognize that marriage involves certain economic responsibilities, and that’s why the law takes upon itself the defense of the weaker partner, from the economic standpoint.”[5]
ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-fault_divorce
Annulment
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annulment
Legal separation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_separation
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=3843453
http://www.money.co.uk/article/1005428-prenuptial-agreements-unromantic-and-unnecessary-or-good-forward-planning.htm
Prenuptial agreement
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prenuptial_agreement
Legal rights and responsibilities for parents living apart
http://www.cmoptions.org/en/pdfs/Legal.pdf
Parental Responsibility
http://www.childrenslegalcentre.com/userfiles/Parental%20Responsibility.pdf
Divorce and Discretionary Trusts
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Business/Family-law-blog/Divorce-and-Discretionary-Trusts-20140117163721.htm