Erika Kirk should work to fulfill Charlie’s dream to end no-fault divorce, says reform advocate
Erika Kirk should work to fulfill Charlie’s dream to end no-fault divorce, says reform advocate
A nationally known advocate for divorce reform has argued that Erika Kirk can honor her late husband’s legacy by working to end no-fault divorce.
“Charlie Kirk knew marriage was vital for the well-being of our country and revitalization of the American Dream,” attorney and divorce reform advocate Beverly Willett said in an Oct. 30 op-ed in The Hill. “Today, marriage has little protection under our laws — a fact of which Charlie was acutely aware.”
No-fault divorce, which is the law in 48 states according to Willett, allows one spouse to legally dissolve his or her marriage by claiming the marriage is irreparably broken. The other spouse has no legal recourse, a fact that Willett says violates the 14th Amendment.
Willett cites a post on X that Charlie wrote less than two months before his murder in which he describes his vision of marriage and the importance of following God’s plan for it.
“God’s design matches our spirtual [sic], emotional, and physical needs,” Kirk wrote. “Maybe not all of our wants all the time — but our needs. Many of our wants and appetites need to be brought under the authority of Christ. That’s called maturity. No-fault divorce and radical feminism are abominations.”
Willett cites a wealth of research on the impacts of divorce and related problems. She then describes her own experience as the victim of her husband’s no-fault divorce of her.
The divorce reform advocate also criticized prominent American conservatives for failing to advocate for the abolition of no-fault divorce.
“Despite the strong link between no-fault divorce and our nation’s ills — including the connection between divorce and school shootings, fatherless homes and criminality in boys — conservatives have chosen to focus primarily on same-sex marriage, which accounts for only 1 percent of marriages,” she wrote. “Meanwhile, heterosexual marriages and the traditional family have begun to disintegrate.”
She said that Vice President JD Vance and former HUD Secretary Ben Carson are two of the only conservative politicians on the national stage who speak out against no-fault divorce laws.
Willett argued that if more people with national influence do not join Vance and Carson, no number of political victories will fix America’s broken culture of marriage.
“Calls for family tax benefits are all well and good, but no amount of tax breaks, conservative rhetoric, or exhortations to ‘get married’ will on their own move hearts and minds of young people disillusioned by the mess of marriage their parents and grandparents have made,” Willett wrote in The Hill.
She said that the realities of no-fault divorce do untold damage to young people and discourage them from entering marriages themselves.
“They are scared of commitment,” she said of young people. “I have seen it in their eyes during a recent talk to young Catholics. Half are children of divorce. They recognize hypocrisy when they see it.”
