Lessons We Learn From Divorce (Ranch)
July 16th, 2010
NPR’s StoryCorp interviewed a pair of sisters who used to live in one of Reno’s many “Divorce Ranch”. Back in the 50s and 60s, divorces for women were hard to come by in all but Reno because of Reno’s 6-week residency period for divorce. So women would come from all over and live for 6-weeks and then get a divorce.
One of the sisters in the story said,
“Listening to stories from the guests, I think we probably thought many times, ‘I sure won’t make that mistake!’”
As divorce attorneys, we are in the same place as these ladies who witnessed divorce, day in and day out. And we also say to ourselves, “I sure won’t make that mistake!” However ironically, the rates of divorce in divorce attorneys (and also marriage counselors) are higher than that of the regular population. That tells us that either we don’t really learn from other people’s mistakes or divorce is contagious, or both. I try to keep in mind that a correlation between divorce and divorce attorneys doesn’t imply causation.