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I’m grateful to Jeremy Baker for his thoughtful comment and I hope he will forgive my single reference to Owens by her first name alone, a departure from the Gazette’s normal house style.

The last three paragraphs — in particular, the last two — are certainly my own opinion. I don’t think I will be able to persuade Jeremy Baker but I’ll try.

His understanding of the law is correct and he is right to say that I am calling for something entirely novel — at least as a matter of law. As a matter of practice, though, we have divorce on demand. A spouse who chooses to defend a divorce petition can do no more than delay the divorce until the couple have lived apart for five years.

I’m sorry Jeremy Baker sees the respondent in a case such as this as the victim of a ‘crime’. When our friends divorce, we sometimes apportion blame to one spouse or the other. But that’s not the job of the courts.

As I argued in the piece, it takes two to make a marriage. Separated couples are sometimes reconciled and may even marry each other again. But if one party has come to the firm conclusion that a marriage is over, a court will not be able to put it back together again. It should allow the party seeking the divorce to remarry — or to resume unmarried status — without having to wait five years.

In the meantime, as I say, Owens remains chained to a husband she no longer lives with.