No-fault divorce goes international!
Jan 7th, 2010 by admin
In the UK, the headline is “Divorce lawyers launch campaign to help couples end marriages more easily“. These lawyers are saying that couples should be able to end their marriage without blame and on the initiative of just one of the partners.
I think they’re on to something…it’s known Stateside as “no-fault divorce”.
In Washington
, couples who have decided to end their marriage are able to do so by one person simply pleading that the marriage is “irretrievably broken”. As an attorney, I think that taking this straightforward approach helps couples; otherwise, it would be up to them or to the court to decide who the “bad actor” was and whether things have really broken down enough to end the marriage. In my opinion, it’s hard enough for an individual to decide this about his or her own marriage. It does not strike me as the most strategic use of public resources to task a judge with that determination.
Suzanne Kingston, head of a UK family law department, sums it up well: No fault divorce would not “in any way undermine the institution of marriage itself but enable people to bring a marriage that is over to an end with minimum distress to both parties and to the children affected.” Aye, aye.
Interestingly, this push for UK divorce reform comes at a time when divorces in the UK are at their lowest levels since 1976. While critics may claim that no-fault divorce increases divorce rates, it doesn’t necessarily follow that increased divorce equals decreased well-being. I think being in an unhappy marriage and being stuck because you haven’t met one of the five grounds for divorce–”adultery, unreasonable behaviour, 2 years’ desertion, two years living apart with consent or five years without consent”–may boost the marriage statistics but isn’t a state of true well-being.
Next up for reform? Impose legal ties on couples who live together. It looks like the law of committed, intimate relationships could hit the UK…about 25 years after we started considering the question here in Washington. But, we’ll get to that one another day.