Florida - Would $100 marriage-license fee help prevent divorce?
Posted by Alexander Evdakov (Mar 19,2009)
John Stemberger, who led the movement to ban same-sex marriage in Florida now wants to make it harder and more expensive for couples to marry and get a divorce.
The facts break down like this. In order to get a marriage license it would cost you $100 more in state's marriage-licensing fees. However those who attend eight hours of premarital counseling would get their money back.
As far as the divorce issue is concerned he is trying to extend the process (meaning allow the government to be more lazy) from the time you file to the actual time it is finalized.
Me personally - I don't think that $100 will make or break someone and stop them or make them think twice about marriage. It's like one of those things if you knew a hamburger was 99 cents everywhere, but you were at the drive through line and saw an ad for weight loss (and you were trying to lose weight). Now would you really get out of the drive through line? Probably not. The fact is most people don't even know what the state fees are until they are about to sign the paper work.
Stembergers argument is that divorce is costly and a 10% reduction in Florida's 86,000 divorces a year would save the state $100 million dollars/yr. The additional fees would go towards premarital counseling trust fund. However, those that choose to go to the additional 8 or 12 hour course would get their money back. After asking some of my friends, most people would rather pay the additional fees and forget about it. Marriage is already busy enough between doing all the paperwork especially if your having a wedding. Why add another thing to your to-do list?
Regarding the divorce issue Judith Stacey, a sociology professor at New York University mentioned that "making divorce harder doesn't make marriage better. And making marriage more expensive hurts those who have the lowest marriage rates to begin with: the poor."
"One hundred dollars if you are poor is different than $100 if you are rich," she said. "If you make it harder to get married, you will have more unmarried people. And they will become poorer faster."
What do you think about all this? Would you care what the marriage fees were or how would it change you plans?
Your Author is Alexander Evdakov
Alexander is a professional digital artist and entrepreneur from Florida. He started his digital design career over 12 years ago focusing on brochures, business cards, and website development under his parent company Dakov Group.com and does freelance photography under Dakov Photography. He is also the creator of BoxWedding.com. Alexander studied marketing and advertising at the University of Florida.