In the antebellum era, border southerners increasingly made use of contractualism in their divorce petitions. Contractualism, or the growing understanding that marriage was not a permanent, sacramental institution but a contractual one with rules, procedures, and escape clauses, allowed more men and women to file for divorce and to use a variety of causes to explain their decision. It was also a dangerous ideal in a society in which so many residents found themselves permanently bound to masters with no legal recourse or escape. Nonetheless, in Kentucky, western Virginia, and Appalachian Virginia, unhappy spouses found an outlet in the local courts and through their use, or manipulation, of legal statutes.
The Operation of the Escape Clauses in the Rome Convention, Rome I Regulation and Rome II Regulation
