By Samantha Putterman | PolitiFact
Within hours of President-elect Donald Trump winning the 2024 election, women took to social media with a warning: If you’re in a broken marriage, get out now.
They said divorce laws would change once Trump is in office, citing the Project 2025 conservative policy document for the next Republican administration.
“If you are a woman in the United States who is currently in an unhappy or miserable or abusive marriage, please do whatever you have to do to get divorced before 1/20/25,” one Nov. 6 Threads post said.
“Project 2025 is getting rid of no fault divorce,” another Threads post warned. “If a woman wants a divorce for whatever reason … and the husband doesn’t … no divorce. This will keep women trapped in violent marriages. But … that’s the point.”
Rose Law Group family law attorney Ashley Hutton:
“Arizona has its own version of an “at-fault” divorce, called a covenant marriage. Arizona is one of only three states in the U.S. that offer this type of marriage—although other states have their own versions of at-fault marriages. Adopted into Arizona law in 1998, the covenant marriage has a few additional requirements prior to a couple’s marriage, including premarital counseling. Once the couple entered a covenant marriage, a spouse contemplating divorce must allege at least one of eight specific bases for divorce, such as adultery, abandonment and abuse. See A.R.S. § 25-903. Otherwise, couples enter a non-covenant marriage that permits unilateral divorce for no reason other than irreconcilable differences. While the option exists, very few couples choose to enter a covenant marriage. In fact, it is a rarity that any Arizona divorce attorney will stumble across a covenant marriage in her career. Data is limited on this point, but some research suggests that less than one percent (1%) of all Arizona marriages take the form of a covenant marriage. See Scott D. Drewianka, Civil Unions and Covenant Marriage: The Economics of Reforming Marital Institutions, 3 (March 2003)‘
‘Despite the recent interest by some conservative policymakers in promoting at-fault divorces (like covenant divorces), it is unlikely that no-fault divorces will become extinct. That decision is up to each state legislature, and such proposals are likely to be met with harsh criticism and backlash. Take, for instance, that seventeen (17) states have purely no-fault divorce laws. The remaining thirty-three (33) states have no-fault divorce laws. To completely reverse such strong public policy in all fifty states is an ambitious undertaking—one that will likely take decades to accomplish, if at all. The viral warning to “get divorced quick” before January 20, 2025 is nothing more than dramatized clickbait.”
