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Incompetence To Maintain A Divorce Action: When Breaking Up Is Odd To Do, Douglas Mossman, Amanda N. Shoemaker

Douglas Mossman

The law has well-established provisions for handling divorce actions initiated on behalf of persons already adjudged incompetent or by competent individuals against incompetent spouses. But how should a court respond if a mentally ill petitioner who is competent to manage most personal affairs seeks to divorce a spouse for bizarre, very odd, or crazy-sounding reasons? Whether to allow a divorce action when the petitioner is motivated by psychotic ideas about a spouse is a matter addressed in just a few published cases, and then only indirectly. Largely unanswered are questions about whether domestic relations courts have the authority to stop …