If you want to divorce in Mississippi, you better pray it isn’t because your spouse beats you. As it turns out, domestic violence is not one of the 12 allowances for divorce in this state.
Sally Doty, a Republican state senator, tried to change that. In February, her bill to add domestic violence to the list of offenses as grounds for divorce met some resistance. Some senators were concerned that the mere allegation with no proof could be used to justify divorce. The language of the bill asks for clear and convincing evidence of abuse but it does not require a conviction. The lawmakers added another route to divorce in the bill, separation for at least two years, and it went to the house where it died this month.
That addition of the two year separation may have been the death knell.
Lorine Cady, executive director of House of Grace, an organization that assists battered women, believes that many of the legislators use the Bible as their guide for deciding grounds for divorce. An allowance for separation violates a particularly strict interpretation of the Bible. The failure of the bill left domestic violence prevention advocates like Cady stunned.
“It is shocking that you can mistreat your partner and there’s no penalties for that. That you must just continue to live in that,” Cady said.
So what are acceptable grounds for divorce according to the state of Mississippi?
- Adultery
- Bigamy
- Desertion for at least one year
- Habitual cruel and inhuman treatment
- Habitual drunkenness
- Habitual drug use
- Impotency
- Incurable mental illness
- Jail or Prison
- Marriage between two related people for whom marriage is prohibited by law
- Mental illness or an intellectual disability at the time of marriage, if the complainant didn’t know at the time
- Pregnancy of the wife by another person at the time of the marriage, if the husband did not know of the pregnancy
Doty says she will re-introduce the bill next session, this time with less room for modifications. In the mean time, domestic violence victims can try to make a case using habitual cruel and inhuman treatment as grounds.
Supporters are hoping abused spouses don’t have to die in the house, like this bill did.
Image by GraphicStock
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