The proposal to turn marriage into a kind of time-share arrangement has shocked Germany. It comes from Gabriele Pauli, who is running to become head of the Bavarian conservative Christian Social Union (CSU) party.
“Many marriages survive only because people think it gives them security,” Ms Pauli told a news conference in Munich. “But only love should count.”
Her idea would apply only to civil marriages. Vows sworn on the altar, “till death us do part”, would not be amended. Civil marriages would be regarded as a limited seven-year contract. “After that initial period each partner would have to say ‘yes’ again in order to prolong the marriage,” she said. “If they do, there is no reason why marriage should not end up as a lifelong partnership, but in the meantime we will have saved the financial and emotional cost of many divorces.” (from timesonline.co.uk)
After seven years of marriage people can decide if they want to still be married or and prolong the "contract" or simply separate. I won't get into the technicalities and legal stuff during such separations, but what do you think will be the impact of society and familie as the corner stone of todays society.
My opinion is that she is just trying to score points and get more popular through controversy.
Seven years is a long period of time where most married couples already have children and are deeply, emotionally related to each other, so most likely the seven years countdown will be forgotten and prolonging the marriage legally will be a routine. Even with marriages that seem unstable, where kids are involved the outcome after seven years would be the same I think and the couples will continue living together.
Marriages with a lot turmoils, and quarrels, cheating etc., or what would be a bad marriage, will end before those seven years, so this limit has no effect on these kind of marriages. Even if somehow this kind of marriages survives through seven years, it will end just as bitter as any bad marriage at any time.
Couples that are doing just fine, but don't have kids are same case like those with kids, perhaps even chances of ending the marriage are even slimmer. The reasons for this is fear of lonliness, the older you get the harder to get a partner, and you won't have kids to support you and be with you.
So, all in all the "seven year" law looks like a marketing stunt, but still if this law would be ever brought in life it's consequences on society as we know it could be quite big. And it does hold the potential to do it. Family would disintegrate and lose it's role completely. Human relationships will become scarce and superficial, emotions will lessen their roles in our life.
Encompassed, it looks like a future thats out of sci-fi script. I s it for the better or for the worse? Who knows. The fact remains that things are on constant change, the very own thought, so just thinking of time limited marriages shows a tendency that marriage is losing it's perspective in the future.
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