Rising divorce reflected bourgeois demand for formal record-keeping

Evidence

What accounts for the rising demand for divorce? Was there some sort of dry rot, eating away at family life? This is what people who prattled about Babylon and chastity believed. But perhaps more and more people simply wanted formal acceptance of the fact that their marriages were dead. Just as more of the middle class wanted, and needed, their deeds recorded, their wills made out, their marriages solemnized, so they wanted the honesty and convenience of divorce, the right to remarry in bourgeois style, to have legitimate children with their second wife (or husband), and the right to decent, honest disposition of their worldly goods. Only divorce could provide this. — Lawrence M. Friedman, A History of American Law, 2876

Categorization

• XREF: This explains why divorce was made to go through the courts (ch19/20 adversarial procedure, ch21 jury shift) — the formalization of previously informal status change is a recurring Friedmann institutional theme. — connects to: Property-owning Americans demanded accessible divorce to protect family claims and titles. — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 259; Dependence on anonymous producers drives demand for formal legal control — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law: An Introduction, 180
• DEEPTHINKING: A compact thesis worth dwelling on: the same middle-class urge that drove deed-recording and will-making (documented certainty, legitimate heirs) drove the demand for formal divorce — status as recordable, standardized bourgeois artifact.

Broader Connections

• Dependence on anonymous producers drives demand for formal legal control #corroborates (0.82) — Lawrence M. Friedman and Grant M. Hayden, American Law, 180