The “no-fault” divorce revolution, begun in the late 1960s, stalled in many states in the United States with the stubborn persistence of fault as a factor in alimony awards and the division of marital property after divorce. In the Introduction to the Principles, the drafters assert that “American law is sharply divided on the question of whether ‘marital misconduct’ should be considered in allocating marital property or awarding alimony.” During the 1970s, many states not only retained fault for purposes of the financial incidents of divorce but also combined a new no-fault ground for divorce with existing fault grounds. Thus, divorce law of many states, as well as the law governing ancillary matters, remains “mixed,” with both fault and no-fault grounds for divorce, and fault taken into consideration as a factor in alimony or property awards or both.

As a means of completing the stalled no-fault revolution, achieving unity among state laws that was not accomplished by the Uniform Marriage and Dissolution Act (“UMDA”), and providing a coherent theory justifying awards to a spouse after divorce, the Principles propose a set of provisions that would compensate a spouse for certain losses attributable to the marriage and its termination. Loss would substitute for the almost universal criterion today of need, and fault would be eliminated almost entirely from consideration in the Principles.