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BigTuna | 2 years ago

A long time *ago I read re: Feynman's divorce that false accusations of abuse were common back then because no-fault divorce didn't exist. Couples that wanted a divorce would have to concoct a story in order to get a judge to sign off. I don't have strong feelings either way because it's impossible to know what really happened between them, but I found it an interesting counterpoint.

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growingkittens|2 years ago

Do you remember what paper in particular? I would like to read the study about rates of false abuse accusations in areas with strict divorce laws.

waterhouse|2 years ago

Wikipedia says:

> In many other states, especially California, the most popular allegation for divorce was cruelty (which was then unavailable in New York). For example, in 1950, wives pleaded "cruelty" as the basis for 70 percent of San Francisco divorce cases.[41] Wives would regularly testify to the same facts: their husbands swore at them, hit them, and generally treated them terribly.[41] This procedure was described by Supreme Court of California Associate Justice Stanley Mosk:

> > Every day, in every superior court in the state, the same melancholy charade was played: the "innocent" spouse, generally the wife, would take the stand and, to the accompanying cacophony of sobbing and nose-blowing, testify under the deft guidance of an attorney to the spousal conduct that she deemed "cruel."[42]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No-fault_divorce#Bypassing_the...

pyuser583|2 years ago

I doubt you’re to find good statistics on domestic abuse in the 1950s.

BigTuna|2 years ago

This was probably 20 years ago now but I don't think it was a formal paper