Five Years Barred From Marrying Again: A Judge's Plan to Rewrite Divorce
Judge Frater's bill would fix the grounds, put every divorce on the record, let courts forbid remarriage for up to five years — and jail anyone who tries it anyway.
The new divorce bill which has been prepared by Judge Frater, of Seattle, and which will be presented to the legislature will, if enacted, make sweeping changes in the state and correct many of the present abuses of the divorce law.
Broadly, the bill is as follows:
Divorces to be granted for the following causes: marriage by fraud, adultery, impotency, abandonment for one year, cruelty, personal indignities, habitual drunkenness, refusal or neglect to make proper provision, imprisonment in the penitentiary, incurable dementias. These grounds will not be sufficient when the marriage was not performed in the state, unless the same are valid grounds under the laws of the state where the marriage was contracted.
Any citizen of this country who has been married for one year and a resident of the state for two years may commence action for divorce or annulment by service of summons; more stringent regulations in the sufficiency of complaint; all evidence in divorce cases to be reported, transcribed and made a part of the record of the case; the judge alone shall make final disposition of property as between divorced persons; if a partner of a prosecuting attorney, or one who has an office in the same suit, shall appeal in the same case against the prosecuting attorney, the court to appoint another person than the prosecutor to defend in such cases; courts to have power to fix inhibitions against remarriage for any period up to five years; violation of such inhibition to constitute contempt of court and be punished as such by fine in any amount not exceeding $1,000 or imprisonment for a period not longer than twelve months; it is made the duty of the prosecuting attorney to prosecute any person violating any divorce decree of the court; full evidence in all cases to be placed before the supreme court on appeal.
“Courts to have power to fix inhibitions against remarriage for any period up to five years; violation of such inhibition to constitute contempt of court.”
Every item on this list — residency requirements, mandatory written findings, who divides the property, barring a quick remarriage — is still recognisable in a modern family-law statute, though Washington would go the other way. In 1973 it became one of the first states to adopt no-fault divorce, scrapping the whole catalogue of cruelties and indignities that Judge Frater wanted to codify. The jail term for remarrying early has not survived; the arguments about waiting periods have.
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