Family provides a level of support, protection, and stability that government cannot. The family plays a significant role in the financial, emotional, and physical well-being of every Texan, and no amount of state spending can ever completely fill this role. Since healthy marriages are manifestly so beneficial, the state must take aggressive steps to strengthen families by creating incentives for couples to prepare for marriage; by making divorce more difficult and deliberative.

Furthermore, the fiscal costs of family breakdown are well documented. In the form of child support collections, the judiciary, law enforcement, and public health care and welfare, the state frequently steps in to assume the costs of broken families. It is incumbent upon the Legislature, therefore, to limit both the social and fiscal costs of divorce.

While the 80^th Legislature successfully directed TANF funds to marriage education programs for low-income couples and established a marriage license fee waiver for couples who undertake premarital education, there is still much work to be done, including:

• Creating additional incentives to encourage marriage and discourage divorce.
• Reforming "no-fault" divorce.
• Statutorily protecting the right of parents to control the education and direct the upbringing of their children.
• Increasing resources for child support collection to help ease the burdens on broken families.
• Lowering the cost of private health insurance by increasing options for families and small business.