Looking for more equity in split

In 1976, Elvin Bishop fooled around and fell in love and Elton John told Kiki Dee, don’t go breaking my heart. Sid was yet to become vicious, although he wasn’t far away. And hair was young, lustrous and long, which pretty much summed up the status of marriage in this country.

That was 42 years ago, when the government created the Property (Relationships) Act setting out how couples – married and de facto – would separate their assets once they separated each other from their daily lives. Largely that meant splitting things down the middle, no matter how the pair came together and who previously owned what.

Since then, hair has got a lot shorter, along with the length of a marriage: 70 per cent of those married in 1972 got to celebrate 25 years and a silver anniversary; that fell to 62 per cent for those married in 1992. Related statistics suggest those who wed in 2012 are even less likely to win a silver medal. Many more are unlikely to wed at all.

You get the point: life in 2018 is very much different to life in 1976. Just as they don’t make love songs like they used to, the way we meet, who we meet and marry, how we live together, raise children and share the financial and physical workload, have all changed. But some of the fundamental rules about how we untangle all of that have seemingly remained buried in a time capsule.

So it makes sense that the Law Commission would look at reforming the 42-year-old legislation and attempt to bring it up to date.

It has come up with a number of recommendations that potentially offer more options than the standard 50:50 split. These include altering that percentage, particularly if one side of the disunion owned a property before entering the relationship; acknowledging the financial impact if one person has sacrificed a career to raise children; and giving courts greater powers when assets are held in trusts.

The public now gets its say over the next six weeks.

Whatever comes out of that, the commission is unlikely to stick with the status quo. An equal division of assets may have seemed fairer, although it made no provision for the many non-working women who would have been left without earning potential following a divorce.

But some may argue that it was not fair that a man or woman could enter a marriage or de facto relationship with most, maybe all, of the assets, and be forced to part with half.

The commission appears to acknowledge this by highlighting what it calls ‘‘relationship property’’, whether that be the value added or assets attained during the partnership.

Of course, the greatest assets produced by a relationship are children. The commission quite rightly sees their interests as the highest priority, which may mean the principal caregiver has more rights to stay in the family home. That would be fair.

Separations are invariably challenging, especially if children are involved.

If the commission is able to deliver more options that better acknowledge the changing dynamics of modern marriage and divorce, then it will have delivered also more and better tools for tackling that challenge.