system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Divorces should be adjudicated based upon the laws under which the marriage originated, not the laws under which the marriage ended.

If you look at the legalities of marriage and put aside all the emotional aspects, marriage is really just a contract between 2 people.  And that contract is recognized and enforced by the government.

So doesn't it make sense that if one or both parties want out of that contract, the contract should be dissolved based upon what was agreed to when the contract was signed?  So if marriage and divorce laws are different when a divorce is finalized, than what was in place when a marriage started, should the laws from the start of marriage (the day the contract was agreed to) dictate what happens in a divorce?

And from what I can see, that change in what the marriage contract means can happen in two different ways:  (1) Marriage and divorce laws can change over years or decades in your jurisdiction or (2) you can get married in one jurisdiction, but then move to another jurisdiction during the marriage and get divorced in that jurisdiction.

As an example, let's look at a couple that gets married in Georgia.  Georgia has a unique law that says that if you can prove adultery by a spouse, you will not be required to pay alimony upon divorce from that spouse.

So say I get married in Georgia.  That marriage and divorce laws in the state of Georgia are the contract that my spouse and I are agreeing too.  So at the time of the marriage, whether we realize it or not, I am agreeing that if I cheat on my spouse and get divorced, I won't be entitled to alimony.

But California has no such exemption.  So if 7 years into our marriage, I get a job transfer and move to California and meet a hot Cali girl and cheat on my wife, why should she have to pay me alimony?  That wasn't the agreement we made 7 years ago when we got married.

And the same can work in reverse.  If you get married in California and then move to Georgia, you can escape paying alimony that you otherwise would have been obligated to.  So if you find out your spouse is cheating on you and you want to avoid alimony payments, the best thing to do is to "try to work things out" and find some way to convince your spouse to move to Georgia, and *then* file for divorce.  That makes no sense.
gpt
I can see your point here, but how do you deal with situations where the laws _need_ to be changed because they are found to be unfair?

Case in point - no fault divorce.  Prior to 1970 (in CA, later in other states), you had to prove _cause_ for divorce, and cause was very limited.  The way it worked out was that if either party didn't want to get divorced, it as nearly impossible to enact it.  This left thousands (potentially hundreds of thousands) of men and women in terrible marriages that they couldn't escape.  Thanks to no-fault divorce, these people finally had an _out_ and were able to live their lives.  It was viewed as such an improvement that over the next 15 years, all but one state enacted no-fault divorce.

In your system, this wouldn't have been permissible.  After all, no-fault divorce was not what was agreed to when the contract was signed (assuming you were married prior to 1969).  Those people would have remained trapped in terrible marriages even though we knew they should have an out, simply because we didn't realize the flaw in the system when the marriage was issued.  We would have no way to fix our mistake, no redress for a broken system.

Now, you might argue that we aren't in any danger of that happening now, but if one thing is true it is that we have _always_ found room for improvement in our laws and regulations.  It may take us years or decades, but we usually find _something_ that needs to be updated or changed as time passes.  You'd have to assume that marriage laws are _perfect_ right now for this system to make sense, and history doesn't really play that out.