Retrospective and Prospective Exactly thirty years ago, I wrote and saw published my first substantive essay on the family crisis in modern America.[1] I had recently completed my doctoral dissertation, which had investigated the origins of family policy in Sweden during the 1920s and 1930s.[2] A National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, provided through the American Enterprise Institute, […]

The Law and Economics of Unilateral No-Fault Divorce A key argument being advanced to support the rewriting of U.S. marriage laws is that granting legal status, on par with marriage, to same-sex couples will have no effect on marriage as an institution, nor upon Americans who choose, or have already chosen, the natural pattern of […]

How the Downturn Reveals Forgotten Family Assets Bombarded by headlines during the past fifteen months announcing the failure of this or that bank, investment firm, or manufacturer, Americans may have missed reports of one downturn that comes as good news. For the first time in a long time, divorce lawyers are apparently experiencing a significant decline […]

What Those Who Know Better Rarely Acknowledge As an undergraduate student at Brigham Young University, I was encouraged by a professor to research the economic costs of divorce to the State of Utah specifically and to society at large. Unknown at the time, this small project would take on a life of its own. Six years […]