Sunday, May 09, 2004

Chile and divorce

Chile has finally got a divorce law. Before they could only get annulments based on the fact that one or both of them had lied when getting married (usually gave a wrong address). Which of course meant that if they wanted any chance of an annulment they had to lie when getting married. Which brings us to the following question:

Christians haven't had easy and available divorce for a very long time, and in Christian cultures, including the ones where divorce rate reaches 50% now, "marriage is forever"-thinking is still quite strong. Of course even in cultures that have always had divorce, like Jewish and Moslem, it is considered desirable that the marriage should last forever, but there is no shame attached to considering the possibility of divorce even before the marriage. Christians and people of Christian background, OTOH, often tend to believe that one should never think of divorce, or take any precautions for the possibility of divorce, while marrying, and for this reason often do not sign a prenuptial agreement even when they need one. Of course not every Christian thinks like that, but I am quite sure in every Christian country there is at least a large minority who do. And the question is:

How does a system where a person's only possibility of divorce is through some action performed (like lying on the forms) while getting married affect such beliefs in population? Did Chile become a place where everyone gives a fake address when getting married, just in case, or were there a lot of people who gave the real address and then regretted it?


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