MoJ to issue divorce reform consultation 'by spring'

Family lawyers waiting for further legislative reform to support separating couples will have to wait a while longer after it emerged last night that any consultation on financial remedies, cohabitation rights and pre-nuptial agreements may not appear until next spring.

Lawyers and parliamentarians have long called for cohabitation reform and putting nuptial agreements onto the statute book. The Law Commission’s scoping paper on financial remedies, which presented four models for the government to choose from, was published nearly a year ago.

In a House of Lords debate last night secured by crossbench peer and former Bar Standards Board chair Baroness Deech (Ruth Deech DBE KC), justice minister Baroness Levitt (the barrister and former circuit judge Alison Levitt) ruled out a ‘piecemeal approach’ to reform.

Levitt said that when the government consults on cohabitation reform, a manifesto pledge, ‘we have a real opportunity to examine the question of break-up and financial remedies in tandem, we are not going to do it piecemeal. Consulting on financial provision alongside cohabitation will bring consistency and fairness across marriage, civil partnerships and cohabitation, recognising that reforms in one area may have implications for the other’. Looking at the matters piecemeal ‘will run the risk of creating new disputes and injustices'.

Widespread consensus once again emerged during the debate on prenuptial agreements.

Baroness Shackleton (solicitor Fiona Shackleton) said: ‘To say that this depends on sorting out the entire matrimonial financial remedies situation, including cohabitation rights, is an absurd excuse for dealing with an issue that is not even mentioned in the 1973 legislation as amended, and on which the Supreme Court in Granatino, now 15 years ago, invited parliament to legislate,’ Shackleton said.

Former Conservative justice minister Lord Faulks (Edward Faulks) said: ‘There is a public policy, I suggest, in favour of marriage, and if people, particularly people in their second marriages, are very hesitant to approach the question of marriage without a prenup- because who knows what might happen and what other people might have claims - it is simply contrary to public policy not to have a statute.’

Baroness Butler-Sloss (Elizabeth Butler-Sloss), a former president of the family division, said it would be simple to introduce prenups 'and I have become convinced that they would be entirely sensible'.

Levitt said nuptial agreements were being considered and will be 'taken into account, to ensure that we have a consistent framework, which will be designed mainly to put children at the centre of what happens when relationships break down’.