This chapter shall be liberally construed and applied to promote its underlying purposes, which are:
(1) To promote the amicable settlement of disputes that have arisen between parties to a marriage;
(2) To mitigate the potential harm to spouses and their children caused by the process of legal dissolution of marriage;
(3) To make the law of divorce more effective for dealing with the realities of matrimonial experience by making irretrievable breakdown of the marriage relationship the sole basis for divorce;
(4) To permit dissolution of a marriage where the marriage is irretrievably broken despite the objections of an unwilling spouse;
(5) To award alimony under this chapter to a dependent party but only during the continuance of such dependency;
(6) To award alimony in appropriate cases so as to encourage parties to become self-supporting;
(7) [Repealed.]