About
Learn More about our progressive online community for the Granite State.

Create an account today (it's free and easy) and get started!
Menu

Make a New Account

Username:

Password:



Forget your username or password?


Search




Advanced Search


The Masthead
Managing Editor
Mike Hoefer

Editors
elwood
susanthe
William Tucker
The Roll, Etc.
Prog Blogs, Orgs & Alumni
Bank Slate
Betsy Devine
birch paper
Democracy for NH
Granite State Progress
Mike Caulfield
Miscellany Blue
Pickup Patriots
Re-BlueNH
Still No Going Back
Susan the Bruce
New Hampshire Labor News
Chaz Proulx: Right Wing Watch

Politicos & Punditry
The Burt Cohen Show
John Gregg
Landrigan
Pindell
Primary Monitor
Scala
Schoenberg
Spiliotes

Campaigns, Et Alia.
NH-Gov
- Maggie Hassan
NH-01
- Andrew Hosmer
- Carol Shea-Porter
- Joanne Dowdell
NH-02
- Ann McLane Kuster

ActBlue Hampshire
NHDP
DCCC
DSCC
DNC

National
Balloon Juice
billmon
Congress Matters
DailyKos
Digby
Hold Fast
Eschaton
FiveThirtyEight
MyDD
Open Left
Senate Guru
Swing State Project
Talking Points Memo

50 State Blog Network
Alabama
Arizona
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
Florida
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Missouri
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Rhode Island
Tennessee
Texas
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin

Divorce NH style...

by: Mike Emm

Sat Feb 05, 2011 at 11:51:04 AM EST


... is about to get a whole lot more difficult. Not content with telling us who can and cannot get married, the GOP now wants to tell us who can get divorced.

Current NH law allows couples to file for divorce for a variety of very specific reasons as well as the general catch-all reason of irreconcilable differences. But now the GOP wants to  restrict your right to divorce if you have children under the age of 18!  

If this bill passes and you have children, you would only be allowed to divorce your spouse if he or she was an adulterer, extremely cruel (sorry, your average run-of-the-mill cruelty won't be enough), or a felon who is serving more than a year of actual time in the pokey. Or if he or she has seriously injured you, has been missing for at least 2 years, or has been on a drunken bender that has lasted at least 2 years. Oh, plus if he or she has joined a cult that denies marriage is valid.  If none of these applies, you are out of luck- you must remain married until the last of your children turns 18 and escapes your loveless home. Think about the implications of that.

In the past, only the most extreme sort of Representative would file this kind of bill. This term, in this legislature, the four sponsors are all chairman and vice chairman of House committees, hand-picked members of O'Brien's leadership team.

I find that remarkable. Is this what NH voted for?  

Mike Emm :: Divorce NH style...
Tags: , , (All Tags)
Print Friendly View Send As Email
Divorce NH style... | 14 comments
Laser Beam (4.00 / 3)
When they talked about the laser beam they were going to use  to  focus on the budget and the economy and the creation of jobs, what they actually meant was they would be focusing in on your bedroom as they try to use government to control your life from craddle to grave.

"Unintended consequences" (4.00 / 5)
(But you have to be willfully ignorant of history, only forty years ago history, to claim "unintended.")

The result of this sort of law is, the spouse seeking a divorce goes out and manufactures evidence of extreme cruelty or adultery.

The kids are brought into court to testify for or against a parent.

The family goes through a bitter fight that poisons things for generations.

Oh, but on the plus side: the Tea Party Tribunal gets a merit badge from the mullahs that it worships.


Where's your sense of nostalgia, elwood? (0.00 / 0)
Can't you see that they are just trying to bring back the good old days?

We just don't seem to use the word "reactionary" enough anymore, I think we need to bring that back too.

They. Don't. Care.
We do.
Rinse, repeat.


[ Parent ]
OK by me (0.00 / 0)
Reactionary extremists has a nice ring to it.  

I was taught to "act, not react."  Let's move forward, and leave them way, way behind.  There has to be a way.


[ Parent ]
And here I thought they were all about personal freedom... (4.00 / 4)
...and of course that jobs and the economy thing.

What truly infuriates me is how the very people who yell the loudest about wanting their own personal freedom, and who trumpet their "constitutionally guaranteed right" to all their own choices, are the most intent on denying almost everyone else any rights, freedoms or choice at all.

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane. --Marcus Aurelius, courtesy of Paul Berch


Freedom for me (4.00 / 1)
but not for thee.

[ Parent ]
hey (4.00 / 2)
lawyers need jobs, too - in the teananny state.  

teanannies! (0.00 / 0)
Susan, when you turn a phrase, you open up whole new worlds.

[ Parent ]
Bedroom Nannys (4.00 / 4)
I really think we need to consider a micro-site "You voted for this?" or some such, a simple soundbite sized site to make sure folks can digest some of the crazy in bite sized chunks.

Hope >> Fear





Create a free Blue Hampshire account and join the conversation.


Jobs, jobs, jobs. (4.00 / 3)
This is a jobs bill.  This will require a new police department to monitor all those couples who are waiting until their youngest child reach the age of majority before they can divorce.

If one of them leaves the marriage before then, who pays the child support that is today required in a divorce?  The NH Taxpayer will have to pick up the bill from all the absent parents, which will create more jobs in the tax department.  

These guys are really on the ball.  That laser beam is working.


Not to mention all the small businesses this will create (0.00 / 0)
private investigators to "find" extreme cruelty, abuse, drunkenness, etc. Photographers to take pictures and videos of perps caught in flagrante, boatloads of psychotherapists to deal with children living in a hostile home, the list goes on and on.

Jobs, jobs, jobs! Problem solved!

They. Don't. Care.
We do.
Rinse, repeat.


[ Parent ]
Wow (4.00 / 2)
Those legislative sponsors need to spend a week or two in the shoes of marriage and domestic violence counselors, child therapists, and/or church ministers to get a better feel for what is going on in truly troubled marriages and what kind of devasting impact such legislation would have on children whose parents are forced to stay married because they don't meet the legislative criteria to get a divorce.

Something is amiss when they are trying to prevent homosexuals from getting married, but they believe in forcing hetersexuals to stay married.  


This is ridiculous! (4.00 / 4)
After little more than ten years of marriage my mother and father divorced...I was ll, my sister was 6.

Within six months both married again...and their new spouses were divorced with small children as well.

Both sets of parents are nearing their 40th wedding anniversary!

Both marriages are clear examples of finding the right spouse the second time around.

When I was 18 I wrote my stepmother a letter thanking her for making my Dad such a better person and a better dad to me, my sister, my stepsister and two half sisters.

My stepfather gave my mother the stability that she had never experienced in her life before.

To have destroyed my parents' chances of finding real love is outrageous.


Have you told a stranger today about Bill O'Brien and his Tea Party agenda? The people of NH deserve to hear about O'Brien  and his majority committed to destroying New Hampshire and remaking it into a armed survivalist preserve.  


Common Theme (4.00 / 2)
When Democrats change social laws, it's to make the law more inclusive.

When Republicans change social laws, it's to restrict who benefits from them, or to punish the nonconforming.


Aaron / Deering. Kuster 2012: http://www.kusterforcongress.com/


Divorce NH style... | 14 comments

Connect with BH
     
Blue Hampshire Blog on Facebook
Powered by: SoapBlox