Orr v. Orr

The laws governing marriage are more often evaluated during divorce proceedings than during the life of an intact marriage. Thus, in settling the Orrs' dispute about their divorce decree, the Supreme Court radically changed the legal basis of marriage in America. As editor Leslie Friedman Goldstein points out, Anglo-American law had held that the "legal core" of marriage was a woman's obligation to provide sexual and domestic services and a man's obligation to provide financial support. The Court's ruling in Orr v. Orr was a complete rejection of such assumptions and one that, in Goldstein's words, "seismically altered" the marriage institution.