Rush to Juarez

It is not a particularly nice place to visit, but the whole point of Juarez, Mexico, is that you don't have to live there. Juarez courts will grant anyone a divorce regardless of where he or she actually lives. Last week the renowned divorce mill was grinding away at an unprecedented rate. All available court personnel had been pulled off regular duty and thrown into the pool typing up decrees. One busy court handled 240 divorces in two hours. At week's end, the total granted since Aug. 1 had reached 4,000, compared with the average 1,000 for a normal month.

The reason for the rush was that New York State was trying to simplify things. In an attempt to modernize the most archaic divorce law in the U.S. (adultery only), the New York legislature last year rewrote the statute to include such flexible grounds as cruel and inhuman treatment and separation for two years. But having made divorce easier at home, it added a murky section that seemed to imply that quickie out-of-state divorces will no longer be recognized. The section will not take effect until Sept. 1, and the approaching deadline was what had everyone going south.

Maybe there was no reason for it. Samuel Fredman, secretary of the New York City Bar Association's matrimonial-law committee, does not think that the new statute will affect Mexican divorces. "Juarez has no domicile requirement," he explains. "So the section is actually irrelevant." It will not even have any force against quickie-divorce states like Nevada, contends Mrs. Stanley Kooper, another lawyer. "The U.S. Constitution says you have to give full faith and credit to other states," she points out. "That goes for any law, including divorce laws."

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