Column: California settled no-fault divorce decades ago. Why is it back in the news?

Ugly? You have no idea.

Every nasty little private thing a marriage could churn up, every infidelity, every insult and threat, every drunken episode and squandered paycheck, every crying child — there they all were, spilled out from a witness stand in a courtroom.

Then and only then, after wife or husband had exhausted the litany of the other's transgressions, could a judge declare them no longer a couple.

And that was the nature of divorce before no-fault divorce laws.

Not every divorce was that emotionally gruesome — not by a long shot — but almost everywhere in the country, a divorce required a wronged spouse, a sinning spouse, and some kind of proof to a legally satisfactory standard. That proof often took sleazy turns, which we'll get into later.

California, ever the pioneer, was the first state to legalize no-fault divorce in 1969. Other states followed suit — New York, the last, in 2010, about two whole generations later.

Thereafter, at-fault divorces could still happen, and they still can. But with no-fault divorces, a couple could split amiably, without accusing or proving anything like bigamy or fraud or abandonment. Under California no-fault law, breakups weren't even called "divorce" anymore, but "dissolution of marriage." One becomes two; go in peace.