Why did no-fault divorce take so long? Blame my parents

Why did it take a 30-year campaign to achieve something as sensible as the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act – the ‘no-fault divorce’ legislation that came into force this week.

I blame my parents. I was old enough to remember them being married, but the end of it I can’t pinpoint, because us kids witnessed little conflict and in the decades of them not being married that followed, I never heard either say a bad word against the other. They even positively reinforced each other’s family stories to us.

I have no idea whose behaviour was cited as ‘unreasonable’ and I don’t want to know. A financial settlement was simple and fair. Their own parents remained lifelong close friends – everyone very proud of my sister and me when we achieved things.

They both remarried. When my dad (who moved to the US) and stepmother were over, they all went out for pizza together. When mum’s cancer prognosis worsened, dad came to see her.

So, through long years of talk on divorce reform, divorces like this have been held up by folk who think divorce shouldn’t be made ‘easy’ because it was already possible to have a civilised end to a marriage. There was nothing stopping couples with or without children behaving like my parents.

Why, therefore, ‘undermine’ marriage by making divorce ‘easier’?

Well, not everyone is like my parents.

The Ministry of Justice’s press release stresses that ‘no-fault divorce’ will remove some of the unpleasantness of divorce: ‘It removes unnecessary finger-pointing and acrimony at a time where emotions are already running high, and spares children from witnessing their parents mudslinging.’

The most important point, though, is that no-fault divorce lessens the ability of one party to use the process to prolong control or abuse. ‘In some cases, domestic abusers can use their ability to challenge the process to further harm their victims or to trap them in the relationship,’ is the most important point made in the MoJ’s announcement.

But this is hardly job done.

In particular, enforcement of maintenance payments, whether agreed or directed by court, is too weak, and got worse during the pandemic.

And in its keenness to divert ‘appropriate’ cases away from the family courts, government policy has made it harder to access both the courts and legal advice.

The huge rise in litigants in person ‘clogging’ the family courts has spared no child or spouse from acrimony. Away from the institution of marriage the Law Commission’s sensible, nuanced proposals on co-habitation and relationship breakdown remain where they landed in the MoJ’s in-tray.

No-fault divorce does not weaken marriage as an institution, and this week’s change is to be celebrated. I benefitted from my parents’ mature approach to divorce. I would like it to be a more common experience.

But if we are serious about protecting children and victims of abuse from distress in this process, there is still much to be done.