The requirement of legal marriage is often a big hurdle for investigators in Latin American countries. The reality is that a large percent of the populace lives in common-law marriage. And it is often difficult, and expensive, to change their status. I can’t count the number of times I taught a family on my mission, only to have their unmarried state end up as a fatal hurdle to their joining the church.<\/p>\n
One thing that I picked up from teaching families in was a healthy appreciation for the gospel benefits of readily available divorce.<\/p>\n
I can’t vouch for the legal details, but what I was told as a missionary is this: Divorce in Guatemala is essentially impossible. It’s very seldom done, it’s quite expensive and takes a long time and requires approval from both parties and all sorts of officials and involves miles of red tape. As a result, the country’s divorce rate is well below half of one percent. <\/p>\n
And therein lies the problem. <\/p>\n
You meet a new family, Jose and Maria, and they’re great. They eagerly read the Book of Mormon; they’ve got great kids; they’re praying and coming to church. You’re excited.<\/p>\n
And then you hit the inevitably-fatal obstacle. When Maria was eighteen, she had a husband named Marcos. For whatever reason — alcohol, abuse, infidelity, or just general breakdown — they separated soon thereafter. And then she met Jose, and they’ve been together for the twenty or thirty years since. <\/p>\n
However, Maria didn’t just enter common-law marriage. For whatever reason — family pressure, financial reasons, church pressure, it-seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time, or whatever — she actually went down and got a marriage certificate. <\/p>\n
Now, thirty years later, she has no idea where Marcos is. He may not even be in the country anymore. Necessary records may be lost or unavailable. Divorce is not a possibility.<\/p>\n
And since she’s technically married, she cannot legally marry her long-term common-law husband. Thus, she is essentially in permanent violation of the law of chastity, which requires that sexual relations be limited to a spouse with whom she is legally married. Neither she nor Jose will pass a baptismal interview. And that perfect family — Jose and Maria and their great kids who run up to you when you come to the door, and who ask you to tell them stories about baseball in America — that family will never be able to be baptized into the church. <\/p>\n
(Let me preemptively address one quibble that always comes up: Yes, technically you can<\/em> tell them that they can get baptized — as long as one of them moves out of the home, permanently, and neither of them ever has sex again. Their days as a family are done, and so are any plans for future kids. <\/p>\n You try telling a family that sometime, smarty pants.<\/p>\n And no, I’m not convinced that that’s the even the best route. What kind of effect does that have on the kids? “Honey, Daddy’s not going to live here anymore.” Yeah, that’s going to have a really positive effect.) <\/p>\n And you run into variations on this theme all over the country. Every family is a minefield. <\/p>\n It’s enough to instill a healthy appreciation for the gospel benefits of divorce. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The requirement of legal marriage is often a big hurdle for investigators in Latin American countries. The reality is that a large percent of the populace lives in common-law marriage. And it is often difficult, and expensive, to change their status. I can’t count the number of times I taught a family on my mission, only to have their unmarried state end up as a fatal hurdle to their joining the church. One thing that I picked up from teaching families in was a healthy appreciation for the gospel benefits of readily available divorce.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2319","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-corn"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2319\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timesandseasons.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}