Michael Dittberner is an attorney in Minnesota who has extensive family court experience. He is responding to the article in the Washington Post advocating a longer waiting period in divorce cases.  See https://blog.amjudges.org/?p=228  

If a one year waiting period is adopted in a state which has no waiting period or a waiting period of less than one year, I suggest that the unintended consequence of the enactment of such legislation will be more litigation and less reconciliation. If a litigant knows that it will now take them one year to get divorced, the natural inclination will be for them to file as soon as possible to ameliorate the effects of the waiting period. I suspect that such over-anxious filers will not be thinking too much about reconciliation and instead will be focusing on soldiering through the process of divorce.

 In Minnesota, where I practice, we have adopted innovative and successful case management programs in our family courts. These programs, which have reduced the amount of litigation and costs for parties going through a divorce, will be negatively impacted by the imposition of a waiting period. There are many cases which currently don’t need to be managed because they are being resolved through mediation and negotiation prior to the filing of the divorce petition. If the parties to such cases feel compelled to file their petition as soon as possible in order to propel the divorce process forward without first mediating, they will unnecessarily add to the parties’ costs and the workload of court personnel who now have to set aside time on a judicial officer’s calendar to triage a case that otherwise would have been resolved upon filing. In addition, parties to a divorce who do not want to wait until the year is over, will be more likely to seek certain types of remedies that our efficient case management system currently discourages them from seeking, such as orders from temporary relief, harassment restraining orders, orders for protection, and child support orders issued by child support magistrates. When parties to an elongated divorce proceeding cannot reach agreement over temporary support and parenting time issues and cannot obtain finality, the result will be additional conflict and litigation, poisoned relationships, increased costs, and strains on our scarce judicial resources. The one year waiting period is a solution our state cannot afford.