A contract is an agreement, typically between two parties, that 1) binds them to perform certain actions or give something and 2) creates the expectation of receiving something in return. Government-enforced contracts make the world a better place because they allow planning in a world of liars. For example, say I decide I want to go to Arizona for school and want to make sure I will have housing before I drive down there. If I don’t know many people in Arizona, then I want to have a contract with an apartment complex so that the complex doesn’t sell to somebody who shows up last minute and offers to pay $2 more per month than I would pay. The complex benefits from the contract as well, from the assurance that I won’t find a complex that is $2 cheaper last minute and leave them scrambling to find a new tenant. Both parties benefit from getting to know ahead of time what the other party will do.
Do only straight-up liars want to break contracts? I think there are a lot of people who, without the negative effects of bad credit or the threat of a lawsuit, would break contracts because their circumstances changed. Sometimes the court might allow a contract to be broken without having to pay damages because circumstances changed so much that keeping up your end was really impossible. But I think that even an honest party that want to break a contract will be prone to see circumstances making completion of a contract “impossible” much sooner than the party who wants the contract to be completed. So government enforcement of contracts prevents liars and people who give up too easily (all of us to some extent) from ruining the reliability of contracts.
Marriage is a contract in a sense. It creates expectations and reliance. For example, you rely on the fact that your marriage will work out by pulling yourself out of the dating pool when dating is the easiest. Many people give up certain career plans in order to have a more family-friendly lifestyle. This reliance is well worth it to people who are expecting to get in return the benefits that they married for (happy family, etc.).
The reliance is not worth it if those benefits are not received. In that case, somebody has forfeited exciting dating and careers for no reason. Contract law calls this detrimental reliance.
What if marriages were “enforced”? This would mean you can’t break them when there has been no fault, and theoretically this means people will not be relying in vain as often, because they will be more assured of getting the benefits they expected to get from marriage. The fact that marriages are not “enforced” could be a reason that fewer people get married in their twenties or at all; they are nervous that they will be giving up a career or their prime years for something that will just be broken down the road. Similarly, if the government stopped enforcing business contracts, people would stop making business contracts.
You may be objecting: “The government forcing two people to stay together isn’t going to ensure them the benefits they hoped to get from marriage. The reason they are breaking up is because they have already seen that those benefits are not coming.” But the expectations that people have affect their behavior. In a world of unenforced contracts, both you and the person who has been contracted to build your pool are going to be nervous that the other person is going to break the contract, and so you want to pay/work as little as possible in order to minimize your losses in case the other party bails on you. Likewise in a marriage, if you’re nervous the other person will leave, you might be hesitant to put your all into creating a strong relationship, for fear that you’ll be hurt when the other person doesn’t care.
I have often reflected on how grateful I am that my wife and I know that we are in it for the long haul. I suppose you could be laughing since we just had our first anniversary on April 29th. But there are some strong influences pushing us towards staying together: our love (perhaps the most common thing that couples start out with), our spiritual obligation, and social pressure. I hesitate to say social pressure, because I don’t want you to misunderstand and think that our families and friends are cold-hearted or really judgmental. We know things happen, some that we might not understand, and are happy to love and support anybody who goes through a divorce. But there is a small part of me that wonders if Melanie would get invited to family events before me if I ever left her : ) As for the spiritual obligation, I was sealed (for eternity) to Melanie by God’s authority in a temple of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and I believe that God expects me to stay with Melanie. I like to think that just our love would keep us together too, but I know that’s what most couples think and yet it only works out for half of them.
Can people without religious pressure achieve the same result of realistically expecting marriage will last? Probably hard to say, since so many people were religious before the change in laws. But I imagine some good econometrics could figure out whether social and legal influences can lead to equally low divorce rates. Certainly though, any influence that promotes the principle of keeping commitments will have some positive effect on the number of lasting marriages, thus allowing people to develop more correct expectations (the benefit of contract law) upon entering into a marriage contract.
I welcome your comments!
I welcome your comments!
Thanks to freelyphotos.com for some public domain photos that I am starting to use : )
No comments:
Post a Comment