My great former intern from Puerto Rico, Melissa Diaz, sent me the web site of the Civil Code reform commission. The effort goes back to the mid-90s, so it may not be related to the American Law Institute Principles of Family Dissolution, but the reforms proposed for divorce grounds are pretty bad. The official summary of the changes to Title IV, Dissolution of Marriage, says:
- divorce would be available by joint OR INDIVIDUAL petition, including by a guardian of an incapacitated spouse
- there would be four grounds for divorce:
- - voluntary, informed agreement by both spouses to end the marriage
- - irreparable rupture of the commonality of life that marriage creates
- - declared absence of a spouse, with complete separation for one year after the declaration
- - a spouse's incompletion of the conjugal and family duties assumed in contracting marriage
All the material about mutual consent is little but a distraction from the fact that this is unilateral divorce, available either by leaving the marriage for one year, or even faster by claiming "irreparable rupture". In all but one of the U.S. states that have a similar divorce ground, judges hold that if one spouse wants a divorce, that proves this ground of divorce and thus requires a divorce. So even the one-year waiting period in this proposal should not be taken very seriously, because with "irreparable rupture", you don't need to have the one year. However, for what it's worth, this proposal says that unilateral divorce petitioners need to prove specific facts behind their claims, and includes some other language emphasizing that the "rupture" must be fundamental and long-term.
The general introduction to all the family law changes say they are intended to conform the law to advances in human rights, pluralism of family forms, and women's empowerment. It doesn't say how these changes to divorce grounds further those purposes, nor claim that there is a right to unilateral divorce, although in describing existing law it speaks of a "right" to have mutual-consent divorce without disclosing what led to it.
The introduction to the divorce-grounds section does speak of a "right to divorce", in the context of explaining why neither the state nor a third party can initiate a divorce, except for guardians of incapacitated persons. "El derecho a divorciarse, asi como el de contraer matrimonio, es un derecho personalísimo que forma parte del catalogo de derechos de la personalidad." [Query: if they mean a right to unilateral divorce, that severely diminishes the long-standing "right to contract matrimony" which they equate it with.]
Spanish text of the official summary concerning divorce grounds, etc.:
