The South Carolina state divorce laws are in my opinion not very fair. I think that there are some aspects that make sense and some that are just ridiculous. For example, I do not understand why they make two people wait an entire year of being separated to then be able to get divorced. Getting a marriage license in South Carolina is so easy, and yet the state makes it near impossible to have a divorce done quickly. It is almost as if the state is trying to propagate heterosexual marriages by making it easy to marry and hard to divorce. I do not think it is fair to make people wait that long. Maybe if the state required a longer waiting period before the marriage license is granted, then they would not be in the position of having to grant divorces. Perhaps people would have a chance to think longer about the decision they are about to make.
I do think though that the laws about property distribution and spousal support are good. However, they could be a little better. I totally agree with the laws that state that the spouse has the right to keep non-martial property including things such as property acquired prior to marriage, acquired by gift or inheritance, acquired in exchange for non-marital property, acquired due to an increase in the value of any non-marital property, or property protected in a pre-marital contract (such as any thing in a prenuptial agreement). This way if a person say has inherited a large piece of land that is very valuable and then is getting a divorce, the land is not included in the martial property that is to be divided.
I also think that the spousal support laws are good too. It is only fair that in the case of a divorce the partner who did not work, or makes less money, would be supported by the husband if she has the children. For example, if a woman was a stay-at-home-mom and had been out of the work force for a substantial number of years in order to take care of the kids, home, etc and then her husband, who was the breadwinner, divorces her, it is only fair that she be supported. It is especially fair that she gets half of the marital assets even though she never technically had an income contributing to the household. Also, in the case of child support, I think that some how the courts should come up with a foolproof way to ensure that child support is being paid. Maybe the money should be taken directly from the paycheck and given to the person with custody. Somehow the laws on child support need to be stricter because there are so many times where no one cent of child support is ever paid.
Overall I think that the South Carolina divorce laws are outdated and not very good. They make it incredibly hard to get divorced and then do not do a lot to help out the children and spouse once the divorce is done as far as monetary support. The system seems to be faulty.
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If you could make one divorce policy recommendation to legislators, what would it be? Would you focus on children's issues.
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