Adultery ‘should no longer be grounds for a divorce’

A ‘no fault’ law would cut the acrimony, says woman judge

ADULTERY should no longer be a reason for a divorce, the country’s most senior woman judge said yesterday.

The law making infidelity a marriage-breaker should be struck from the statute book, along with any idea that one party is at fault, according to Supreme Court deputy president Baroness Hale.

She said the system that allows an unfaithful spouse to be blamed for the collapse of a marriage is unsatisfactory and a new no-fault divorce law would take the acrimony out of break-ups.

She also suggested it should take longer to get a divorce, with issues relating to children and money being decided before it is finalised.

Lady Hale’s call revives her long- running campaign for fault-free divorce reforms. A number of judges have backed the idea in recent years, but politicians have been reluctant to act since the failure of the last attempt to introduce a no-fault divorce law.

The Family Law Act pushed through by John Major’s Tory government in 1996 was based on plans drawn up by Lady Hale, but the reforms were dropped five years later after trials showed that the new system encouraged more people to divorce.

Cases are currently decided under laws passed in the 1960s that say a husband and wife can seek a divorce if their spouse is unfaithful with a member of the opposite sex.

The 1969 Divorce Reform Act made adultery a cause for divorce if someone could no longer bear to live with their spouse. However, if the couple stay together for six months after the infidelity, adultery ceases to be a reason for divorce. Other faults that can be cited are unreasonable behaviour and desertion. A husband or wife who admits fault can get a ‘quickie’ divorce in little more than six months.

The 1969 law also allows fault-free divorce when a couple separate for two years by mutual agreement or for five if only one of them wants a legal split.

Lady Hale was head of family law at the Law Commission, the Gov- ernment’s law reform advice organisation, in the 1990s when she drew up a series of changes including the plans that led to the Tories’ disastrous fault-free divorce legislation.

‘Most of us in this area think the present law is unsatisfactory,’ she told The Times yesterday.

Lady Hale said couples should be required to make arrangements about money and looking after children before they are granted a divorce, and that such a system would end bitter court struggles.

She suggested a couple should have a year-long cooling-off period after declaring their marriage was at an end during which all necessary arrangements would be made.

She added: ‘We should make it take longer to get a divorce and encourage people to sort out what happens to the home, children, money before, rather than after, they get a divorce.’

Other senior judges who back reforms include Sir James Munby, president of the Family Division, who has said the courts should no longer have a role and couples should record their divorce at a register office in the same way as they do their marriage.

Under the 1996 Family Law Act, a couple, or one of them, would start the no-fault divorce process with a meeting to discuss how to negotiate the end of the marriage.

The law was dropped in 2001 after researchers found the meetings ‘tended to incline those who were uncertain about their marriage towards divorce’.