Imagine if a couple wanted to
be divorced but were unable to because a judge felt there
was not enough proof that a good reason existed for the
divorce. Before 1973, this could and did happen in
Connecticut. A judge could find that the parties had
not proven any of the legal grounds for divorce (18
months of separation, adultery, habitual drunkenness,
intolerable cruelty, sentence to life imprisonment,
conviction of certain sex crimes, absence for 7 years, or
institutionalization for mental illness for 5 years) and
refuse to grant a divorce.
To let spouses who wanted to
be divorced get divorced, the Connecticut legislature
passed a law in 1973 making irretrievable breakdown
a legal reason for a divorce. Most
people refer to this as no fault divorce.
This is not exactly correct because even when
irretrievable breakdown is the reason for the divorce, a
divorce court can still find that either or both parties
are at fault and take the fault into consideration when
entering financial orders.
A Connecticut divorce court
can divide the parties' assets in any way that a judge
feels is appropriate. A party can get anywhere from
none of the assets to all of them, although such an
extreme division rarely happens. In deciding how to
divide assets, the divorce court can consider any of the
following factors: the
length of the marriage; fault; the parties’ age, health,
station, occupation, amount and sources of income,
vocational skills, employability, estate, liabilities,
needs, opportunity for future acquisition of assets and
income; and the extent to which each party contributed to
the acquisition and preservation of the assets.
The modern trend in divorce law in
dividing property is to focus less on fault and more on
the other factors. A divorce court tries to make
orders that are fair and make sense for each party's
financial situation.
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