Can 'supervows' save marriages? Minnesota ponders

They're meant for couples who want to express an extra measure of commitment to their marriage by making it harder for them to divorce. Among the measures they'd agree to would be a two-year waiting period between the time they decided to divorce and the time they did so.

It's an idea borrowed from Louisiana, where it originated two years ago.

Covenant marriages are a new cause among groups that want to lower the nation's 50 percent divorce rate. In addition to the waiting period before a divorce, the covenant marriage concept also reverses some of this country's 20-year march to no-fault divorce.

Some blame the no-fault trend for disrupting families. Others credit it with easing the acrimony that used to linger because, to divorce, one spouse had to accuse the other of harm.

Covenant marriage bills cropped up in 17 state legislatures last year, though all but Arizona rejected them. However, many states that rejected covenant marriages did approve smaller, divorce-fighting policies.

"It . . . appears that we are on the front end of a covenant marriage boom that could sweep across the nation," said Steven Nock, a University of Virginia sociology professor who will spend the next five years tracking the phenomenon for the National Science Foundation.

Supporters, including conservative religious groups, say covenant marriages can help prevent some divorces by slowing down a process that now proceeds too fast and too often.

Divorce cuts U.S. women's standard of living an average of 30 percent and is the single most common act to send children into poverty. Proponents of the new vows say that cost makes it an issue that reaches beyond the home and into public policy.

Opponents and skeptics say there's no evidence that making divorce harder saves marriages and that, in fact, covenant marriage laws can backfire and make some divorces messier. They worry that women will be more reluctant to leave abusive marriages. And they wonder how many couples will choose the special marriage, anyway. In Louisiana, for example, only 3 percent have.

The Minnesota covenant marriage bill would set up two options for couples: standard marriage or covenant marriage. Covenant couples would agree to premarital education and to marriage counseling if they later were considering divorce. They also would agree to a two-year waiting period for a divorce, except in cases involving abuse, abandonment or adultery.

"Nobody who's part of this is saying that this should be for everybody," said Bill Doherty, a University of Minnesota professor of family social science and family therapist who supports the covenant marriage bill. "And I do think that some divorces are necessary; some divorces are exactly the right thing to do.

"But I believe there are many divorces that are unnecessary because people did not prepare for the marriage adequately (or) did not get help in time to salvage the marriage."

For example, Doherty cited a 1998 poll of Minnesotans for the non-profit Minnesota Family Institute in which 66 percent of divorced respondents said they wished they and their ex-spouses had tried harder to work through their differences.

"My main interest is building in a lot of supports for couples," he said.

Though conservatives generally support making divorce more difficult, some conservatives object to sanctioning any new kind of marriage for fear that it will open the door to other kinds that they don't want, including marriages for gay couples.