pouse should beable to obtain relief (that is, a divorce) from the spouse who has done somewrongalmost every state divorce law has in the past required the plaintiff toprove one of a number of legislatively recognized grounds. Typical groundshave included adultery (almost universally); desertion; habitual drunkenness;conviction of a felony; impotence (carried over by many state legislatures fromannulment law); and, most commonly used by divorcing parties, cruel andinhuman treatment. Because the states interest in maintaining stablemarriages was assumed, divorce suits could not be treated like other litigation. One spouse, the plaintiff, had to prove grounds even when both spouseswanted the divorce. Thus, divorce trials were filled with charges andcountercharges and generally omitted investigation of the actual viability of themarriage. Moreover, the divorce system required that the plaintiff be withoutfault; a variety of fault-based defenses were therefore recognized. A plaintiffcould be denied a divorce if guilty of (1) condonationthat is, forgiving thedefendant of the behavior that provided grounds for divorce;(2)recriminationplaintiffs who had themselves given grounds for divorce werenot entitled to the help of a court (the result of this doctrine was that if bothparties wanted a divorce so badly that each provided grounds, neither couldterminate the marriage); (3)connivanceif the defendants misbehavior couldin some fashion be laid at the door of the plaintiff, that party was not entitled toa divorce; and (4) collusiona divorce could not be obtained by a plaintiff whohad somehow conspired with the defendant to provide evidence of grounds fordivorce. By the mid-20th century, most state legislatures had recognized oneor more no-fault grounds for divorce, usually consisting of a substantial period(from one to five years) during which the spouses had lived separate andapart; sometimes insanity or incompatibility were acceptable groun...
