Marriage is a status resulting from a civil contract, but very few people who enter into it know what this contract is. It assumes certain rights and obligations. What are they? That the wage-earner will provide. This is enforcible, at least theoretically. What else? That the parties live in an emotional and mental state designated by an agreement “to love, honor, and cherish,” and, sometimes, “obey.” This is obviously unenforcible. (I make this assertion despite the recent Texas case in which a husband obtained an injunction restraining his wife’s employer from flirting with her.) The contract continues for life, subject to termination for causes which depend chiefly upon the place of residence, actual or acquired. If they live in South Carolina and stay there, the contract is indissoluble. In New York the contract may be terminated for adultery, unless the other party has likewise sought refuge outside of marriage; in Alabama, for habitual drunkenness; in Nevada, for neglect to provide for one year; in Kentucky and New Hampshire, for joining a religious sect which believes marriages unlawful; in New Jersey, for extreme cruelty; in Wisconsin, if the parties have voluntarily lived separately for five years; in Massachusetts and a host of other States, for desertion; in Pennsylvania and Oregon, for personal indignities or conduct rendering life burdensome; in Vermont, for intolerable severity; in France, if the parties have other emotional interests; in Denmark, by consent; in Russia, by request. Of course, in most of these states there are other grounds, but the result is that either party can bring about a situation which permits divorce or can make life so intolerable for the other that he or she consents to it. But these grounds must arise subsequent to marriage; the agreement cannot be made in advance. In life the duration of marriage depends upon the desires or consent of individuals. In law it is perpetual, subject to termination not by agreement made at the outset, or by later consent, but by court decree. At the time of entering into marriage people usually know merely that somehow, somewhere, some time there is a way out if the situation becomes too strained. Technically, since the contract is for life, a divorce is granted for a breach. Thus there is an implied term, as there is in every contract, that relief is granted for a breach--but what constitutes a breach depends not upon the terms of the contract or the law of the place where the contract is made but upon the jurisdiction where relief is sought--a matter of which the parties ordinarily know nothing when they make the contract. Convention seems to demand that the parties know not what they do.