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"Why is it self-evidently reasonable for Mrs Owens to claim she cannot be expected to live with a husband whose crime is simply that he does not wish to be divorced against his will? And why on earth is Mr Owens' unwillingness to be divorced to be deemed "misbehaviour" on his part? If this were correct, even a model spouse in every way may be deemed to have "misbehaved" purely because the other spouse wishes for a divorce. This is quite clearly not the law set out in s.1(2)(b) MCA 1973, which requires a causal link between the behaviour of one spouse and the unreasonableness of expecting the other to live with the first. Moreover, no generally-accepted understanding of marriage holds that it is a marital duty of a spouse, upon the other wishing to divorce, to actively agree to "grant" a divorce or else be deemed to have 'misbehaved'. Legal procedures may exist for a divorce to be imposed by a Court in defined circumstances, but to reach that outcome in every case by inventing a 'duty to agree to a divorce' is utterly novel - and insidiously shifts the official reason for the divorce from the spouse who is seeking it to the spouse who "refuses to agree" to it.
To create "divorce on demand" through "deemed misbehaviour" in this way would be judicial legislation, using a legal fiction to render nugatory the legally-recognised option of one spouse to defend a divorce petition brought by the other."

I don't think it's possible rationally to disagree with Jeremy Baker on this.

Joshua Rozenberg is entirely entitled to argue that he thinks the law should be changed to allow unilateral divorce without cause. Others are entitled to agree with him, or in my case, to disagree with him. But that is not the law at the moment. It would be such a substantial change that it should not be made without the conscious and intentional decision of duly enacted legislation.

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