Can a woman who has been forewarned by her husband that he is an alcoholic claim it as grounds for divorce after the marriage?

Many women marry alcoholic men in the mistaken hope that marriage will change them. Loving and marrying an alcoholic and living with him, however, are two different propositions. Nevertheless, traditionally, and even now, in some states, foreknowledge of a prospective spouse’s alcoholism or drug addiction is enough to prevent divorce on the grounds of habitual drunkenness or addiction.

These cases are particularly difficult because addictions, particularly alcoholism, are often progressive. The groom-to-be who facetiously admits to his "heavy drinking" could a few years into the marriage become a unemployable alcoholic who drags his wife and children into a vortex of despair. A Sensitive, Passionate Man chronicles a 20-year descent of a brilliant lawyer whose alcoholism destroyed him and his family. At the onset of his marriage, he was a "heavy drinker," and could easily have argued that in a divorce action. (In this case, his wife, who wrote the book, struggled with the inflexibility of New York’s divorce laws to obtain a legal separation that would give her and her children some financial protection.)