New York Divorce Report - New York's Divorce and Family Law Blog

The reasons why marriages fail and couples divorce have been studied ad nauseum.   Apparently, everything, including your smoking habits, age and even the state in which you reside is predictive of your odds of divorce. 

Annli Rufuse on the The Daily Beast details 15 of these studies. Here are some of the more interesting ones:

• If you live in a red state, you're 27 percent more likely to get divorced than if you live in a blue state.

 In red-state couples traditionalin The Compassionate Community: Ten Values to Unite America, by Jonathan Miller and Al Goly marry younger—and the younger the partners, the riskier the marriage. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the states with the lowest median age at marriage are Utah, Arkansas, Kentucky, and Oklahoma.

 (Source: National Vital Statistics Report, 2003; cited in The Compassionate Community: Ten Values to Unite America, by Jonathan Miller and Al Gore) 

• If your parents were divorced, you're at least 40 percent more likely to get divorced than if they weren't. If your parents married others after divorcing, you're 91 percent more likely to get divorced.

This could be because witnessing our parents' divorces reinforces our ambivalence about commitment in a "disposable society," says Divorce Magazine publisher Dan Couvrette. "In most people's minds, it's easier to get a new car than fix the one you've got."

 

(Source: Nicholas Wolfinger, Understanding the Divorce Cycle, Cambridge University Press, 2005)

• If only one partner in your marriage is a smoker, you're 75 percent to 91 percent more likely to divorce than smokers who are married to fellow smokers.

"The more similar people are in their values, backgrounds, and life goals, the more likely they are to have a successful marriage," notes Tara Parker-Pope. From age to ethnicity to unhealthy habits, dissimilarities between spouses increase divorce risks.

 

(Source: Rebecca Kippen, Bruce Chapman and Peng Yu, "What's Love Got to Do With It? Homogamy and Dyadic Approaches to Understanding Marital Instability," Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, 2009)

•  If you have a daughter, you're nearly 5 percent more likely to divorce than if you have a son.

This figure multiplies with the numbers of daughters or sons. "We think it happens because fathers get more invested in family life when they have boys," says Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, a History and director of research for the Council on Contemporary Families.

 

 

(Source: Gordon Dahl and Enrico Moretti, "The Demand for Sons," published in the Review of Economic Studies, 2005)

 

• If you're of "below average" intelligence, you're 50 percent more likely to be divorced than those of "above average" intelligence.

Presented by University of Delaware education professor Linda Gottfredson, codirector of the Delaware-Johns Hopkins Project for the Study of Intelligence and Society, this figure joins assertions in Richard Herrnstein and Charles Murray's controversial 1994 bestseller The Bell Curve that those with IQs of 100 face a 28 percent probability of divorce in the first five years of marriage, compared to just a 9 percent probability for those with IQs of 130.

 

(Source: Linda S. Gottfredson, "The General Intelligence Factor," Scientific American, Winter 1998, and Richard J. Herrnstein and Charles A. Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, Simon & Schuster, 1994, page 176) 

New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, granted a non-adoptive or biological parent visitation with her former same sex partners’ child. In a very narrow ruling, the Court in the case Debra H. v. Janice R., held that only biological or adoptive parents can seek visitation or custody of children.

The parties, Debra H. and Janice R., entered into a Vermont civil union in 2003. A month later, Janice R., who was artificially inseminated, gave birth to M.R. Janice denied Debra’s requests to adopt M.R. and their relationship soured. When Janice refused Debra’s efforts to have visitation with M.R., Debra commenced an action seeking visitation.

Applying New York law established in the case Alison D. v. Virginia M., the Court declined to extend parental rights to persons who are not the biological or adoptive parents of the children.

In doing so, the court expressly declined to establish criteria for parenthood in relationships in which one partner or spouse is not the biological parent, saying a more flexible standard could invite claims of parental rights by people who have no business raising them.

Parents could not possibly know when another adult’s level of involvement in family life might reach the tipping point and jeopardize their right to bring up their children without the unwanted participation of a third party. . .

In sum, Alison D., in conjunction with second-parent adoption, creates a bright-line rule that promotes certainty in the wake of domestic breakups otherwise fraught with the risk of "disruptive . . . battle[s]" (Jacob, 86 NY2d at 659) over parentage as a prelude to further potential combat over custody and visitation.

Though neither the biological or adoptive parent, Debra H. was granted parental rights because the parties had entered into a civil union. The Vermont civil union law requires that “all the same benefits, protections and responsibilities under law” of marriages be accorded in civil unions.

This decision, in effect, established two sets of standards for children of same-sex couples: one set for those born to couples with a legally recognized relationship, and another for those born to couples without legal recognition. In the absence of a legally cognizable relationship, the party must be either the adoptive or biological parent to acquire parental rights. A non biological or adoptive parent in a civil union or, perhaps, marriage, may acquire rights by virtue of the relationship.