No-fault divorce law faces legal challenge in Nebraska

— A devoutly Catholic husband who refused to grant his wife a divorce on religious grounds urged Nebraska’s highest court Thursday to overturn the state’s no-fault divorce law in a case that could leave Nebraska as the only state without a law that lets couples end their marriage without assigning blame. “One party will receive a divorce by testifying that in spite of efforts to save it, is irretrievably broken,” Dycus’ attorney, Robert Sullivan, said in his arguments before the court. It’s like trying to hold back an avalanche.” Nebraska’s no-fault divorce law, approved in 1972, allows judges to dissolve a marriage if both spouses declare that the marriage is “irretrievably broken,” or if one spouse makes that statement and the other doesn’t deny it. Nebraska’s no-fault divorce law allows one spouse to declare the marriage dead, and the courts “rubber stamp that” without giving the other spouse an adequate chance to argue why it should be preserved, said Matthew Heffron, an attorney for the Thomas More Society, which filed a brief urging the court to strike down Nebraska’s law.