Covenant Marriage in Comparative Perspective

Parties to a covenant marriage must, as a matter of state law, undergo premarital counseling to gain a deeper sense of marital permanence and fidelity; they must pledge to take measures to preserve the marriage in the face of difficulties; and they agree in advance to abide by narrowly drawn grounds of divorce and not seek divorce under the state's no-fault provisions. Professor Spaht, whose work places her in the first rank of American family law scholars, both reviews the late-twentieth-century legislative history of covenant marriage, which she sees as a response to the radical autonomy of 1970's divorce reform, and explains how covenant marriage works in practice.