North Carolina’s divorce law is clearly an outlier. A dangerous one. | Opinion

When I made the difficult decision to end my marriage in 2021, I knew it was the right choice for me. But I didn’t understand at the time that our state legislature gets to decide if I’m really ready to divorce.

North Carolina is one of only two states that require an entire year of living separately before you can start the divorce process in court.

For those of us who aren’t familiar with what has become something like a hazing ritual, imagine this: You’ve told your spouse you want to end your marriage, but you can’t go to court and file for divorce just yet. You must stay legally married, living in separate households, for 365 days. If you spend a night together? That clock starts all over again. For some couples, that’s just annoying and inconvenient. But for others, that wait could be mentally, financially, or physically threatening.

As a former state policy advisor and, finally, a divorcee, I wanted to understand why divorce laws are so complicated, and how North Carolina measures up against the rest of the country. So, I researched divorce statutes in all 50 states to find the minimum wait time each state requires, even for the simplest divorces. Here’s what I learned:

Required separation periods exist in only seven states. Depending on the state, a couple trying to divorce must wait either six months or a year, during which the couple cannot live together, and/or they cannot have “marital relations” (sex). After paperwork is filed in court to start the legal divorce process, 35 states require a “cooling-off period” before the divorce can be finalized. Once that timeline has passed, the divorce can be signed by a judge.

Each state’s divorce laws are different, but North Carolina is clearly an outlier. From the day you decide you want a divorce, the minimum time you must wait is 395 days — a 365-day separation period, plus a cooling-off period. The only state with a longer total wait is South Carolina, at 455 days.

So, why do we require these waits? According to a New Bern newscast in 2020, “legislators say they do not know how the (separation) law came into being, and one senator says the 1931 law is so old it is impossible to find records for it.”

But the real reason is clear: to deter divorces from happening. After all, we know that no such wait exists to wed — the state’s seeming concern about our marital choices only applies to ending a marriage, not starting one.

Furthermore, waiting requirements disproportionately impact women, who are much more likely to file for divorce. (I acknowledge I am taking a heteronormative lens on marriage. Still, I want to call out the statistically high, negative impact these laws have on women.) When we make divorces harder to get, we put women in danger. While a couple is still legally married during required waiting periods, one spouse could, for example, drain a joint bank account. Women are also at the highest risk of domestic violence when they take steps to leave a partner. In states like ours, even victims of domestic violence are required to wait before they can end a marriage.

But there’s hope for change. This session, legislation has been filed that would remove North Carolina’s separation period for victims of domestic violence. At a time when working across the aisle feels exceptionally rare, bipartisan bills have been filed in both the state House and Senate. And while changing our divorce requirements has been attempted before (bills in 2015, 2019 and 2022 all went nowhere) this is the first time we’ve seen bipartisan support in both chambers for eliminating any divorce waiting requirements.

Laws that require extensive waits to get divorced are dangerous, sexist and arbitrary. Women’s well-being, and even their lives, are at stake — these laws are inconsistent at best, and deadly at their worst.

Every state with required waiting periods for divorce needs to reevaluate the intent and impact of these laws, and North Carolina is leading the charge. North Carolina legislators must support House Bill 604 and Senate Bill 575.

Clarification: This April 30 op-ed about divorce law in North Carolina said that if a couple spends a night together during the separation period the clock starts over on the separation period. Current N.C. law says that isolated incidents of sexual intercourse between a divorcing couple do not restart the clock on the separation period, and the waiting period for a divorce is one year and one day.

This story was originally published April 30, 2023 at 6:00 AM.