Marriage is a long held tradition in many cultures. It is the legal and/or often religious ceremony joining two people in the eyes of a family, religion and/or government. Traditionally, marriage is “”until death do us part.”” However, it is a social contract that can be broken. Before 1970, getting a divorce meant proving that one spouse had done something wrong or had acted in a way that caused the breakdown of the marriage. Someone had to be at “”fault,”” which meant that grounds for the divorce had to be established. Such grounds might have included adultery, physical or mental abuse, abandonment, confinement or holding against one’s will, insanity and the inability to be intimate with your spouse. No-fault divorce laws took away the need to prove any of those issues. By 1983, most states had adopted this type of divorce. Born of these laws was the concept of unilateral divorce: either partner feeling the urge to end the marriage could do so. These laws, in conjunction with other social shifts, led to sharp increases of divorce rates in the 1980s. As the public came to understand that half of marriages end in divorces, a movement to restore a traditional model of lifelong monogamous marriages and reduce divorce began in the 1990s. Covenant marriage is an approach to divorce reform that allows couples to opt for a marriage that is more difficult to end than the “”standard”” marriage granted in most states. It is completely voluntary, only available in a few states, and somewhat controversial. This Fact Sheet examines what is known about covenant marriage and its take up rate in the states that have enacted it. (Author abstract)