Americas Divorce ProblemOn August 15, 1997, Louisiana made an historic change in its domestic relations laws by enacting the nations first covenant marriage bill. Following Louisianas lead, Arizona enacted similar legislation in May 1998 and other covenant marriage (CM) bills are now under consideration in at least twenty additional states. It thus appears that we are on the front end of a covenant marriage boom that could soon sweep across the nation. Here we consider just what covenant marriage is and why it is a concept whosetime appears to have come. We also take up and respond to the most common objections or reservations that people have expressed about it.What is Covenant Marriage?Couples wishing to marry in Louisiana are now required to choose between two marriage regimes: the standard marriage with virtually unrestricted access to no-fault divorce or a covenant marriage designed to be somewhat harder both to enter and to exit. The covenant option specifically acknowledges that marriage is a lifelong commitment and differs from conventionalMarriage in a number of additional ways:Covenant marriage requires premarital counseling. Counseling must include discussions of the seriousness of marriage, the lifelong commitment being made by the couple to their marriage, the obligation to seek marital counseling if problems arise later in the marriage, and the exclusive grounds for divorce or legal separation in a covenant marriage. Couples must sign an affidavit acknowledging their commitment and prove that they have received counseling on these issues.Likewise, divorce from a covenant marriage requires the couple to have sought marriage counseling and to have made a good-faith effort to resolve their differences.Although a no-fault divorce is still possible for covenant marriages, the new law requires that the couple live separate and apart for two years (vs. six months under the current marriage regime) or be legally separated for eighteen months.Dissolving a covenant marriage in less than two years requires one person to prove fault on the part of the other. Acceptable faults are the traditional ones: felony conviction, abuse, abandonment, or adultery. Irreconcilable differences, general incompatibility, irretrievable breakdown of the marriage, or we just dont get along any more are not acceptable grounds for divorce, so if these are the problem, then you have to wait the lull two years.Newly marrying couples must choose either the covenant or the standard regime. It is not true that the law requires new marriages to be covenants or abolishes the standard regime (a point about which there has been some confusion).And finally, the law allows currently married couples to convert (or as proponents prefer, upgrade) to covenants.(The Arizona law differs in some details but is essentially the same as the Louisiana law, and the same is true of CM bills now under consideration in other states.)Hailed by some as the solution to Americas divorce problem and denounced by others as a huge step backwards, covenant marriage will prove to be neither. Or such in any case is our working hypothesis after the first year in a long-term effort to evaluate these emergent covenant marriage regimes. On the positive side, the transparent intent of the law is to make marriage a more enduring commitment (indeed, a lifelong commitment) by requiring couples to receive counseling both before they get married and later when difficulties arise, and by making divorce more difficult to achieve. The law is also clearly intended to promote a more sober consideration of the commitments and obligations that marriage entails. These, we believe, are undeniably good things. On the negative side, we are quick to acknowledge that familial well-being is threatened by any number of large-scale social, economic, and political forces, that marriages go sour for many reasons, only a few of which can be anticipated in advance, and thus that a couple who has consummated a covenant rather than standard marriage has, in reality, done relatively little to stave off the forces that will buffet them in the years ahead.Why Some People Like the Idea.Since the 1970s, all states have had virtually unrestricted no-fault divorces available to any married person who wanted one. The only restriction in most cases is a waiting period that can be as short as a few months and is rarely more than a year. The no-fault revolution, successful everywhere, was motivated by a belief that the former marriage regime trapped many women and children in difficult, abusive, or otherwise unsatisfactory marriages. Shifting cultural values about divorce, remarriage, and related issues were also contributing factors. Divorce rates, of course, had been going up prior to the no-fault movement and continued to go up thereafter; in the last decade, they have finally begun to come down. The effects of no-fault divorce on overall divorce rate