Marriage Offensive Launched in Michigan - 3/9/09

[Smartmarriages]

- MARRIAGE SAVERS LAUNCH OFFENSIVE IN MICHIGAN

Dear Diane,
I participated in five "Marriage Summits" in Michigan last week, which
sparked great media coverage including this article in The Detroit News.
Mike McMannus 

Bravo to Mike. Remember you can attend his Marriage Savers Master Session in
Orlando plus his workshop on Divorce Legislation and his Community Marriage
Policy morning Roundtable.  - diane
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Religious leaders launch push to save marriages Group will host summits to
introduce mentoring programs, lobby for divorce waiting periods.
Gregg Krupa 
The Detroit News 
March 5, 2009

An interfaith coalition of religious leaders is launching a marriage
offensive in Michigan over the next 48 hours.

Convinced that stubborn rates of divorce will yield to marriage counseling
and patience, a group of more than a dozen ministers, priests, rabbis, imams
and laity have scheduled a series of meetings today and Friday to introduce
marriage-saving programs to Metro Detroit couples, lobby legislators for
mandatory waiting periods for divorce and commit Macomb County to a
Community Marriage Policy, which 223 communities across the country have
adopted.

"Michigan's divorce rate is among the highest in the Midwest," said Michael
McManus, president of Marriage Savers, a nonprofit that is one of several
groups participating in the effort to prolong marriages in Michigan. "We
need to save some of these families and stop the harm that happens to
children of divorce, who have many more problems in life with poverty,
incarceration and more bad marriages."

The advocates will use the meetings to promote peer ministry, in which
couples who averted divorce counsel troubled couples. They also will lobby
legislators at a Legislative Marriage Summit in Lansing today. Other
meetings will take place today and Friday at churches in Birmingham,
Highland Park and Roseville and a mosque in Dearborn Heights. Local clergy,
legal professionals and civic leaders will sign what is billed as the
largest Community Marriage Policy in the country, Friday at Sacred Heart
Church in Roseville.

Signatories to the policy pledge themselves to encourage enactment of the
five-part Community Marriage Policy program, which calls for six months of
preparation before marriage, annual church-run marriage retreats, training
married couples to intervene in troubled marriages, a 12-week reconciliation
course for separated couples and creating so-called step-families -- support
groups for families and couples dealing with troubled marriages.

The leaders say the Community Marriage Policy has proven its worth
nationally, and the peer counseling programs -- including Retrouvaille, a
national, multifaith effort that recently drew praise from Pope Benedict XVI
-- have lowered divorce rates.

"We can empower healthy, married couples to mentor other couples for
lifelong marriages," said the Rev. Lawrence Ventline, of the Archdiocese of
Detroit.

Michigan had the 27th highest rate of divorce in the nation, with 3.4
divorces per 1,000 residents in 2007, according to the National Center for
Health Statistics. Illinois, with the third-lowest rate of divorce -- 2.6
divorces per 1,000 persons -- requires a two-year waiting period for
contested divorces and six months for uncontested divorces.

While Michigan currently requires a six-month waiting period for divorces of
couples who have children and 60 days for those with no children, critics
say the rule is so easily evaded that an effective waiting period does not
exist. They advocate, for couples with children, a six-month waiting period
for uncontested divorces and a two-year waiting period when one spouse
objects to divorce.

Twenty-two states have waiting periods for no-fault divorces, ranging from
three months to two years, and 28 states have none, according to
DivorceReform.org, a group of lawyers seeking to reform divorce law.

"I can appreciate people trying to save marriages and make divorce more
difficult, but it does not apply to every situation," said Michael Robbins,
a divorce lawyer and a past chairman of the Family Law Section of the State
Bar of Michigan. "There are all sorts of reasons why we would not want to
make it more difficult to get divorces and to end marriages as quickly as
possible, including abuse.

"Maybe what we ought to be doing is making it harder to get married,"
Robbins said.

The advocates likely face an uphill struggle in the Legislature. More than
10 years ago, a proposal to enact longer waiting periods passed in the House
but failed in the Senate -- the closest any such proposal has come to
approval.

In 2004, Gov. Jennifer Granholm vetoed a bill that would have mandated
marriage preparation to qualify for a license and some education for parents
in divorce proceedings.

The Catholic Church has long required couples to complete a similar
requirement before they can marry, and the advocates hope to encourage more
widespread use of that requirement.

They also seek to make routine the peer ministry counseling, like
Retrouvaille, which they say have saved tens of thousands of marriages.

While the Retrouvaille program is strongly endorsed by the Catholic Church,
less than 50 percent of the participants in Metro Detroit sessions are
Christian, let alone Catholic. Jews, Muslims, Hindus and other couples have
all participated.

Four couples who completed the Retrouvaille -- named for the French word for
"rediscovery" -- and have remained married said it helps couples begin anew
by giving them the skills to talk to each other about feelings and emotions
in constructive ways.

"I found that my marriage and my wife were still of value to me," said Mark
Squier of Fraser. He and his wife, Betty, participated in the program 23
years ago, saved their marriage, and have participated in Retrouvaille ever
since as volunteer peer mentors. "We learned how to communicate, although we
really weren't all that good at it, still, for the next four years or so.
But we kept at it."

"One thing we did was to stop using the D-word," Betty said.

Detroit News Staff Writer Mike Wilkinson contributed to this report.

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