After the Reformation, marriage came to be considered a civil contract in the non-Catholic regions, and on that basis civil authorities gradually asserted their power to decree a "divorce a vinculo matrimonii," or "divorce from all the bonds of marriage." 

Since no precedents existed defining the circumstances under which marriage could be dissolved, civil courts heavily relied on the previous determinations of the ecclesiastic courts and freely adopted the requirements set down by those courts. 

As the civil courts assumed the power to dissolve marriages, courts still strictly construed the circumstances under which they would grant a divorce, and now considered divorce to be contrary to public policy.  

Because divorce was considered to be against the public interest, civil courts refused to grant a divorce if evidence revealed any hint of complicity between the husband and wife to divorce, or if they attempted to manufacture grounds for a divorce.  Divorce was granted only because one party to the marriage had violated a sacred vow to the "innocent spouse." If both husband and wife were guilty, "neither would be allowed to escape the bonds of marriage."

Eventually, the idea that a marriage could be dissolved in cases in which one of the parties violated the sacred vow gradually allowed expansion of the grounds upon which divorce could be granted - from those grounds which existed at the time of the marriage, to grounds which occurred after the marriage, but which exemplified violation of that vow, such as abandonment, adultery, or "extreme cruelty."