Prior to the 1980 amendments of the Pennsylvania Divorce Code, parties were only able to obtain a divorce by establishing fault grounds under Pa.C.S. 23 Section 3301(a), i.e., desertion, adultery, cruel and barbarous treatment, bigamy, imprisonment for more than two years and indignities. We do not encounter many divorces that proceed under fault grounds because they require far more time and money to establish grounds.
The statutory incorporation of no-fault grounds in 1980—institutionalization, mutual consent and irretrievable breakdown—allowed Pennsylvania to join the rest of the country by addressing divorce in a more modern and realistic view. Today, the two-year separation requirement in a unilateral no-fault divorce remains one of the longest in the surrounding states and seems to reflect the paternalistic notion that parties should not divorce in the hope that a longer separation period will incite resolution.
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