Divorce laws in England and Wales are to be overhauled so that couples that are wanting to get divorced will be able to split with less acrimony. Whilst this may sound like bad news, it is the firm belief of Marriage Week that this is, in fact, a good thing. Our current divorce laws have been rooted in Victorian concepts of fault on one side and change is very long overdue.
When a couple decide that their marriage cannot continue, which is almost always after much heartbreak and soul searching, couples find that they need to find a reason for divorce from a short list of scenarios – and often none of them reflect the actual reason for their desire to divorce. Not having a ‘matching’ reason to get divorced will clearly not force a couple to stay together, so instead you can see a ‘blame game’, where couples experience an acrimonious period.
There is a misconception that people frequently hold that couples will make a rushed decision to get divorced and they therefore worry that these reforms will make divorce ‘easy’ – the reality is that couples reach the decision to get divorced after much heart-ache. Again, making divorce difficult does not encourage people to stay together, it simply discourages people from getting married in the first place, and makes divorce more painful for them and their family.
This is why National Marriage Week is so important as it focuses on celebrating marriage and encouraging couples to invest in their relationships.
Marriage Week 2019: Recipe for a Healthy Marriage
For more thoughts on this, see the Marriage Foundation’s website