u/vox

Rebecca Feinglos never expected to get divorced. She’d been with her partner for nine years, and married for six, but finally she had to admit to herself that her relationship had taken an abusive turn.

It was 2021 when she decided to end it. But Feinglos was surprised to discover then that the state she was living in, North Carolina, requires couples to reside in separate homes continuously for a full year before they can even file.

“In amicable divorces you could lie, but I did not have an amicable divorce,” she told me. “It took 18 months for my divorce to be signed by a judge, and we did not have children.”

When she was finally out of her marriage she felt angry. She knew that many people could not afford to live in separate places, let alone pay for the attorneys needed to navigate all the fraught legal proceedings. Feinglos, a former state government employee with a master’s degree in public policy, started researching divorce laws nationwide. “It was so confusing even for me,” she said. “This was before ChatGPT, and all the Google search results were from family attorneys saying, ‘Oh this is really complicated, you definitely need to hire us to help you.’” She has spent the years since pushing to change those laws.

North Carolina is one of a handful of states, including South Carolina and Arkansas, that require couples to live separately for a set period before they can file for no-fault divorce. Most states make couples wait after they file, a “cooling-off” period meant to give spouses a chance to change their minds. In Wyoming, it’s 20 days. In Missouri, 30. In California, couples need to wait six months, and having children can stretch the timelines further. In some states the clock only starts when one’s spouse is formally served, which means a husband or wife who’s hard to track down can add weeks to the wait before it even begins.

“The system sets people up for conflict, sets people up for war,” said Erin Levine, a former divorce lawyer who founded a company that helps people navigate divorce outside the traditional law firm model. “In some states it’s called a ‘petition,’ in some states it’s called a ‘complaint,’ the forms say ‘spouse v. spouse’ — you are being sued.”

This issue runs, inevitably, into the culture wars. Today some conservatives are trying to make it even harder to get divorced, part of a broader push to strengthen the traditional nuclear family, built on the argument that children fare better when parents stay together. Over the last few years Republican lawmakers in states like Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas have considered new restrictions on no-fault divorce, which lets a person end a marriage without proving their spouse did something wrong. Others have proposed expanding so-called covenant marriages, which require counseling before the wedding and allow divorce only for specific reasons like adultery or abuse. House Speaker Mike Johnson has long endorsed making divorce harder, and Vice President JD Vance has complained that no-fault divorce allows people to “shift spouses like they change their underwear.” (Faced with criticism, a spokesperson later said that Vance does not support changes to divorce law.)

But as more people come forward with stories of the financial cost, family stress, and even physical danger of extended divorce proceedings, there’s a growing push to address their complaints by making it easier to separate and divorce rather than harder. In 2023, Maryland lawmakers eliminated fault-based divorce entirely, cut Maryland’s separation mandate from a year to six months, and let couples count as separated even while living under the same roof. Washington, DC, has gone further. The same year, the DC Council unanimously scrapped its requirement that couples separate before divorce, and in Virginia, a law that took effect just last month lets people get in front of a judge on the first day they separate, instead of waiting six months or a year to sort out custody, support, and who stays in the house.

The issue has gotten more attention on social media over the last few weeks, as Jen Hamilton and Hadley (Vlahos) Fairley, two bestselling authors with more than 7 million followers across Instagram and TikTok, have started speaking out about how divorce laws in their respective states affect women like them. Hamilton, who is based in North Carolina and separated from her husband in June, has blasted the “asinine, outdated, and paternalistic laws” that keep people trapped in marriages, and has been fundraising on her platforms to help women afford to escape their unsafe relationships.

You can read more for free using this gift link from Vox: https://www.vox.com/policy/499215/divorce-marriage-wedding-husband-wife-north-carolina-jen-hamilton-hadley-vlahos?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IndyUFRFenJHV1AiLCJwIjoiL3BvbGljeS80OTkyMTUvZGl2b3JjZS1tYXJyaWFnZS13ZWRkaW5nLWh1c2JhbmQtd2lmZS1ub3J0aC1jYXJvbGluYS1qZW4taGFtaWx0b24taGFkbGV5LXZsYWhvcyIsImV4cCI6MTc4ODE3NDkyMSwiaWF0IjoxNzg2OTY1MzIxfQ.NwA-8yMj0rxBOmKofYxSxCp-W3xsM3M3v3xxCT-Exl8&utm_medium=gift-link

Hi r/divorce,

Rebecca Feinglos never expected to get divorced. She’d been with her partner for nine years, and married for six, but finally she had to admit to herself that her relationship had taken an abusive turn.

It was 2021 when she decided to end it. But Feinglos was surprised to discover then that the state she was living in, North Carolina, requires couples to reside in separate homes continuously for a full year before they can even file.

“In amicable divorces you could lie, but I did not have an amicable divorce,” she told me. “It took 18 months for my divorce to be signed by a judge, and we did not have children.”

When she was finally out of her marriage she felt angry. She knew that many people could not afford to live in separate places, let alone pay for the attorneys needed to navigate all the fraught legal proceedings. Feinglos, a former state government employee with a master’s degree in public policy, started researching divorce laws nationwide. “It was so confusing even for me,” she said. “This was before ChatGPT, and all the Google search results were from family attorneys saying, ‘Oh this is really complicated, you definitely need to hire us to help you.’” She has spent the years since pushing to change those laws.

North Carolina is one of a handful of states, including South Carolina and Arkansas, that require couples to live separately for a set period before they can file for no-fault divorce. Most states make couples wait after they file, a “cooling-off” period meant to give spouses a chance to change their minds. In Wyoming, it’s 20 days. In Missouri, 30. In California, couples need to wait six months, and having children can stretch the timelines further. In some states the clock only starts when one’s spouse is formally served, which means a husband or wife who’s hard to track down can add weeks to the wait before it even begins.

“The system sets people up for conflict, sets people up for war,” said Erin Levine, a former divorce lawyer who founded a company that helps people navigate divorce outside the traditional law firm model. “In some states it’s called a ‘petition,’ in some states it’s called a ‘complaint,’ the forms say ‘spouse v. spouse’ — you are being sued.”

This issue runs, inevitably, into the culture wars. Today some conservatives are trying to make it even harder to get divorced, part of a broader push to strengthen the traditional nuclear family, built on the argument that children fare better when parents stay together. Over the last few years Republican lawmakers in states like Missouri, Tennessee, and Texas have considered new restrictions on no-fault divorce, which lets a person end a marriage without proving their spouse did something wrong. Others have proposed expanding so-called covenant marriages, which require counseling before the wedding and allow divorce only for specific reasons like adultery or abuse. House Speaker Mike Johnson has long endorsed making divorce harder, and Vice President JD Vance has complained that no-fault divorce allows people to “shift spouses like they change their underwear.” (Faced with criticism, a spokesperson later said that Vance does not support changes to divorce law.)

But as more people come forward with stories of the financial cost, family stress, and even physical danger of extended divorce proceedings, there’s a growing push to address their complaints by making it easier to separate and divorce rather than harder. In 2023, Maryland lawmakers eliminated fault-based divorce entirely, cut Maryland’s separation mandate from a year to six months, and let couples count as separated even while living under the same roof. Washington, DC, has gone further. The same year, the DC Council unanimously scrapped its requirement that couples separate before divorce, and in Virginia, a law that took effect just last month lets people get in front of a judge on the first day they separate, instead of waiting six months or a year to sort out custody, support, and who stays in the house.

The issue has gotten more attention on social media over the last few weeks, as Jen Hamilton and Hadley (Vlahos) Fairley, two bestselling authors with more than 7 million followers across Instagram and TikTok, have started speaking out about how divorce laws in their respective states affect women like them. Hamilton, who is based in North Carolina and separated from her husband in June, has blasted the “asinine, outdated, and paternalistic laws” that keep people trapped in marriages, and has been fundraising on her platforms to help women afford to escape their unsafe relationships.

You can read more for free using this gift link from Vox: https://www.vox.com/policy/499215/divorce-marriage-wedding-husband-wife-north-carolina-jen-hamilton-hadley-vlahos?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6IndyUFRFenJHV1AiLCJwIjoiL3BvbGljeS80OTkyMTUvZGl2b3JjZS1tYXJyaWFnZS13ZWRkaW5nLWh1c2JhbmQtd2lmZS1ub3J0aC1jYXJvbGluYS1qZW4taGFtaWx0b24taGFkbGV5LXZsYWhvcyIsImV4cCI6MTc4ODE3NDkyMSwiaWF0IjoxNzg2OTY1MzIxfQ.NwA-8yMj0rxBOmKofYxSxCp-W3xsM3M3v3xxCT-Exl8&utm_medium=gift-link

Kansas voters rejected a proposed amendment to change how state supreme court justices are selected. This piece above was originally published on August 4. You can read it for free using the gift link: https://www.vox.com/politics/497834/kansas-ballot-court-republicans-abortion-referendum-state-supreme-reform-rights?view_token=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJpZCI6ImdlQkRvSXI1a1YiLCJwIjoiL3BvbGl0aWNzLzQ5NzgzNC9rYW5zYXMtYmFsbG90LWNvdXJ0LXJlcHVibGljYW5zLWFib3J0aW9uLXJlZmVyZW5kdW0tc3RhdGUtc3VwcmVtZS1yZWZvcm0tcmlnaHRzIiwiZXhwIjoxNzg3MTU5MjkzLCJpYXQiOjE3ODU5NDk2OTN9.cd5NKvn8AVwud67O-gWj_SRGFdzzd2uwuBR5lhebv3Y&utm_medium=gift-link

Four years after the Dobbs decision, abortion battles have largely taken a backseat in national news to other policy fights this cycle. Leaders in the anti-abortion movement say they’re disillusioned with President Donald Trump’s unwillingness to push for further restrictions. The federal battle over access to abortion medication seems to be settled — for now. Public awareness of that fight is limited, and even at the state level, a couple years have passed since the high-pitched but successful state-level efforts to protect abortion access in red states.

Yet a little-known battle has been playing out in Kansas, where a ballot measure to change the way state supreme court justices are selected serves as a reminder that these fights over abortion are still active, even if they take the form of creative procedural and administrative efforts.

It would have opened the floodgates for similar efforts in other states to politicize the remaining independent state courts (13 other states use a method similar to Kansas) and provide a road map to undoing abortion protections in other states that have safeguarded them.

GLP-1 drugs promised to usher in a new era of treating obesity as a disease. We could leave behind the anti-fat biases of the past, which blamed obesity on moral failing or personal weakness. Instead, these drugs would allow us to approach it as a medical condition, a complex matrix of genetics and other forces which could be changed with the right dose of these powerful new medicines.

Or so the thinking went.

While the clinical potential of these drugs remains immense, they have yet to change how the broader US culture perceives and engages with weight and weight loss. Even as millions of Americans shed pounds in bulk for the first time, they are also contending with fierce stigma and shaming from others — instead of being criticized for being fat, they are being criticized for using GLP-1s.

The social media communities that have blossomed around GLP-1s are filled with tales of awkward conversations and much worse. Partners who berate a significant other who wants to go on Wegovy or Zepbound. Coworkers who blame the drugs for their rising insurance costs. Even dismissive and unsympathetic doctors and nurses.

Some people who take GLP-1s must contend with an uneasy sense of living behind enemy lines: Many people describe being at work or out in public and overhearing people talking about GLP-1s and passing judgment on people who they think are taking a “shortcut” to lose weight.

“It’s like you’re being stigmatized without the person who’s [saying] it even realizing it, necessarily,” said Adriana, a 33-year-old GLP-1 user who lives in the Chicago area. (Vox agreed to identify the people we spoke to by their first name, to protect their privacy when discussing stigma.)

This is not just evident from anecdotes. Researchers have put the question to the test. And they have found that Americans not only feel more negative stigma toward somebody who lost weight with a GLP-1 than somebody who lost weight through diet and exercise — they also feel more negatively about the GLP-1 user than somebody who never lost weight at all.

“It seems like people are really reacting negatively to the idea that somebody who has lost weight with a GLP-1 might be, quote-unquote, ‘taking the easy way out’ or cheating the system,” said Erin Standen, a psychology professor who studies health and behavior change at Rice University and led one such study. “There’s a lot of internalized stigma and judgment we have from the culture about our bodies and ourselves.”

Americans have internalized the message that being overweight is a personal failure so thoroughly that, now that the kind of extraordinarily powerful weight-loss shots and pills long hoped for are here, many people struggle to see it as good news. They see it as cheating.

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