survivinglife

In my previous post, I touched on the covenant marriage contract that 17 states are offering to engaged couples.  I have to admit that I am torn on this issue.  I think that sometimes too many young couples rush into marriage, and don’t really understand the extent of the commitment and compromise that is required to maintain a healthy marriage, therefore ending in divorce.  On the other side of the issue, I don’t believe that any group or organization should have the ability to say whether someone can or can not get married, or divorced if that may become the case. 

With a covenant contract, a couple must go through counseling first, either with a counselor or a member of the clergy.  It then becomes up to the counselor/clergy whether or not the couple should be married.  If the counselor/clergy refuses to agree to their marriage, then what happens?  Can the couple still get married?  The answer to that is yes, they still can get married, but they may not be able to get married in the church that they wanted to have the wedding at, and they won’t be able to have a covenant marriage contract. 

On the plus side of the covenant marriage, counseling can help couples learn how to handle some of the stresses that marriage can bring about.  It can help couples learn positive ways to handle disagreements, disappointments, as well as how to compromise in tough situations.   Theses are just some of the positive points for having a covenant marriage contract.  I want to warn you, though; there are also some negative points about the contract that I would like to talk about in my next post. 

What exactly is a covenant marriage license? 

Designed to reduce the rate of divorce, a covenant marriage license has certain guidelines that a couple must agree to and follow in order to be able to get their marriage license and get married.  So far 17 states have introduced legislation to have some kind of covenant marriage agreement for couples wishing to get married.  None of these states require a covenant marriage license to be able to get married, but they are using tactics to try and encourage couples to choose the covenant marriage over the standard marriage license.  One of the ways states are trying to encourage couples, is by making the covenant marriage license less expensive than the normal marriage license. 

Will this type of marriage license catch on?  So far; it doesn’t seem to be, even though 17 states have enacted legislation for this, the number of couples opting to have a covenant marriage is still extremely low.