SHOULD MARRIAGE LICENSES EXPIRE ?

Writing recently for the New York Times, author Matt Richtel in an article entitled, ” Till Death, or 20 Years, Do Us Part”, mused about whether setting an expiration date for marriage might be the best way to address new attitudes about marriage — those that render it expendable depending on circumstances.

Richtel, who writes most often about technology, makes his case for a twenty-year contract with tongue in cheek but does make the serious point that no real mechanism exists, short of prenuptial contracts, to mitigate the drama and stress of divorces that happen at statistically predictable stages of marriage.

Richtel implies that making marriage contracts renewable might have the double advantage of lessening the stigma of divorce where it proves inevitable, and, conversely, of raising the consciousness of couples whose marriages will grow stronger if re-examined and effectively re-negotiated at intervals that coincide with marriages’ biggest stressors.  Various experts cited in the article suggest that these milestones involve the birth of a child, a job change, the death of a family member, or when the couple finds themselves living in an empty nest.  While most of these events are unpredictable, others are not.  Generally, for example, empty-nest syndrome shows up at roughly the twenty-year mark.  The president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, Kenneth Altshuler,  quoted in the article, noted that, in his own practice, divorces seem to cluster around the 7 and 20 year marks.  As it turns out, the seven year itch may be more than a movie title.

None of this is to suggest seriously that renewable marriage contracts are really ripe for serious thought  given the tenor current political dialogue on the overall issue of marriage.  Instead, however, Richtel’s article  makes us think more seriously about what should be done at the beginning of a marriage to lessen the trauma and bitter discord that so often characterizes the end.

True, prenuptial agreements do put a temporary crimp in the image of  unsullied romance that we expect to survive from the  first date to the end of the honeymoon.  (Although anyone who has ever planned a large wedding knows that only a strong dose of denial can keep that illusion  alive.)

On the other hand, at what other point in a relationship will a frank and, mercifully, hypothetical discussion about the practical issue of divorce take a lesser toll on a couple’s relationship?  Balance this against the angst that the couple will suffer if their marriage is among the half that end in divorce and at a time when love and goodwill are no longer the most important underpinnings of the negotiations.  Once that comparison is made, the only remaining question is what will better serve the couple and their future children — betting  everything that they will beat the odds, or promising from the start to do the right thing in the unexpected event that they won’t?