The problem with no-fault divorce

It looks as if I’m the only one who wants to keep fault in divorce then. Perhaps it’s because I’ve seen so many divorces where there was actually fault, usually one of the parties running off with someone else. I can see why the adulterous party in the business should want to remove the distasteful fault element; I can’t quite see how it improves the situation for the cuckolded or otherwise wronged spouse. Some women I know whose husbands have moved onwards and upwards to marry their mistress have referred to them in a fashion that would make that poor woman who was banged up in Dubai for saying that her ex husband was an idiot and that his second wife looked like a horse sound like Justin Welby.

And if the wronged party wants to put the grounds for the divorce on the record, well, that’s the least they’re owed; it’s simply telling it like it is. Neither is it fair to the spouse who wants to stay married to tell him or her, tough, you’ve got to lump it. Previously, an objection from one spouse could hold up the divorce for five years, which is inconvenient for their spouse moving on, but, you know, seeing that both parties signed up to be married until death should them part, it was the barest acknowledgement of their rights and feelings. Now they can be sent packing, like it or not, after six months.

Perhaps the only element of this wretched so-called reform that seems sensible is that it enables both spouses to petition for divorce if neither of them can stand the other; previously it had to be just one of them.

The justice secretary, David Gauke, presumably to get a break from Brexit where he’s been terrifically busy, has presided over this nail in the coffin of a once-respected institution:

“Frankly, we are not going to keep marriages together by having a divorce process that just makes it more acrimonious [and} tries to apportion blame in such a way that the couple are likely to have a weaker, poorer relationship subsequently than they would otherwise do.”

I’m not sure he’s got things the right way round.