How does the bargaining in typical divorce cases differ from bargaining in divorce cases featured in the media? In what ways is Kramer vs. Kramer typical of the process? In what ways is it atypical?
Divorce proceedings are different in so many ways today from the divorce proceeding pictured in the movie Kramer versus Kramer. The movie was released in 1979 at a time when courts still applied the assumption that in divorce proceedings, children are better off with their mothers than with their fathers. Thus, in the movie, the judge awarded the custody to Joanna Kramer although there was no evidence presented that she was in a better position to take care of the son than Ted Kramer. The award simply abided by the old principle of the “tender years doctrine” (Neubauer and Meinhold 2013, p. 340). Aside from many states doing away with this doctrine, they have also adopted the no-fault divorce in which spouses need no longer damaged each others’ reputation in the court to justify the filing of the divorce. Today, spouses who both agree to divorce may not even need to appear in court under certain circumstances (Baum p. 231). Most divorce cases today are settled out of court and do not reach the trial stage, unlike that presented in the movie, for practical reasons: to lessen the costs of the process. Negotiations are, thus, conducted out of court, and only a small minority goes to trial (Baum p. 231).
The movie, however, does provide a window as to how complicated divorce proceedings are because they often involved a host of other problems, such as child custody and terms of settlements, including alimony and child support. Thus, divorce is not simply the dissolution of the legal partnership between husband and wife, but also a severance of other matters that carry emotional, social and economic values to them. What is typical of most divorces, aptly reflected in the movie is the issue of the children that are often caught in the center of the severance of relationship between spouses. Even if the court grants equal custody to both parties, the complication that divorce entails is still not resolved because children still suffer the consequences: being shuffled from one parent to another, losing the presence of both parents in one home, and the child’s alienation once his or her parents remarry and have other children.
References
Baum, L. (2012). American Courts: Process and Policy. Cengage Learning.
Neubauer, D.W. and Meinhold, S.S. (2013). Judicial Process: Law, Courts and Politics in the United States. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Cengage.
