Report comment

Please fill in the form to report an unsuitable comment. Please state which comment is of concern and why. It will be sent to our moderator for review.

Comment

The law clearly isn't hostile to all men. Mrs Owens has been trying to get a divorce since May 2015 and so far all decisions have favoured Mr Owens.
They have also been married a lot longer than 10 years; 40 years this year in fact.
This case is about the specific point in the process of divorce where you have to prove the marriage has broken down because of someone's behaviour. It is nothing to do with financial issues.
Divorce is the most stressful experience, for most people, apart from bereavement or losing your home.
Yes, there are a handful of unpleasant characters out there, both men and women, who have married for self-serving reasons. But don't dismiss the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people and many hundreds of thousands more children, every year, with this clichéd view that women only marry for money and men always get a poor deal.
This is just not true. And it certainly isn't the case here.
Whatever the outcome of this case, the judges will be working within the parameters of the current law, obviously.
The divorce process has not been altered fundamentally since 1973. It is a process we know is far too complicated for non-lawyers to deal with apart from in very straightforward scenarios. But legal aid funding has been removed in recent years and what was a bad situation before, is now ruining lives.
There are so many reasons to simplify the divorce process and I have never met anyone who actually believes that making it hard for people to divorce benefits anyone other than the handful of divorce lawyers who are still being paid.
In the longer term it won't take much just to shorten the timescale for a no fault divorce without consent from 5 years down to say 1 or 2.
You have a right to get married and you have a right to want to be unmarried again. After 1 year or 40 years you know when a marriage has not worked out. It is no one else's business why.
But what will be interesting here, is whether, in the meantime, before a change in the law, the judges interpret the present law, so that a behaviour petition doesn't have to be of the standard the lowers courts have suggested, to enable a person to be granted a decree absolute, in circumstances where the only other option, without consent, is to wait 5 years.
I don't think there are many people who would willingly accept not being able to alter their legal marital status for 5 years without relying on the spouse they want to divorce for cooperation. There could be many reasons why that cooperation is not forthcoming - not least of which may be to exert control, or obtain an agreement over financially supporting children, or to gain another financial advantage. Both men and women are equally capable of bullying and self-serving behaviour.
If this case goes against Mrs Owens that is what a huge number of people are facing. There are around 105,000 divorces in England and Wales every year. Nearly half of those are based on behaviour. Just imagine if they were told the standard of "unreasonable" was higher than they thought. That it was based on what a judge they may never meet (who may not even be married or in a relationship) thought was unreasonable. That they had to file a list of insulting and offensive allegations and be prepared to stand in a court and prove them if challenged. And if that wasn't possible or they didn't have the stomach for it (without legal aid), they would have to wait 5 years for a divorce.
The consequences of the decision in this case may be more significant than some people realise.

Your details

Cancel