What is provocation?

Provocation is behavior that incites a response. For example, if the wife sues the husband for divorce, claiming desertion, the husband could claim as a defense that she provoked his absence or desertion. She would be unable to profit by her bad acts.

It is easy to see that provocation as a defense, like so many other areas of divorce and family law, easily ends in he says-she says.

Needless to say, provocation is not an adequate defense to a claim of physical or mental cruelty. There was a time when men viewed their wives as property and beat them. Happily, those days are past. "She was asking for it" will not fly with any judge.