Should getting a divorce be made as easy as “discarding an old carrier bag”? I think it should be, actually, and I probably know as much about marriage as Ann Widdecombe, who has criticised proposed reforms that will enable couples to arrange “over the counter“ divorces.
Widdecombe was speaking about the move to take divorce out of the court system and have it dealt with by a number of regional centres. These measures, called for by our most senior family judge, Sir James Munby, are an attempt to free up the courts and have the all paperwork done by administrative staff. This streamlining of the process could speed things up – particularly in the case of uncontested divorces where no children are involved. This seems entirely sensible, but critics like Widdecombe who already think divorce is too “easy” are upset that getting a divorce will be as simple as getting a TV licence. Which reminds me …
Actually, divorce is rarely simple. Feelings are complex, and never divided fairly or equally when a relationship ends. The divvying up of children and home is fraught, but this a separate thing to the legal declaration of the end of a marriage. Indeed, it is often only through the process of divorce itself that many begin to understand that, whatever they intended it to be, marriage is a serious legal contract based on property. Therein so much conflict lies. The sheen of romance, the choosing of elaborate wedding favours, the rose-petal confetti certainly help to blur any comprehension of what marriage means legally, no matter what special and individual vows you have conjured up.
If, after the thrill is gone or the wedding is paid for, a couple without children decide to separate, it is sure better to simplify the process by which they may unbind themselves legally. Munby is aiming to make the system more “honest”, and to decouple the administrative process of divorce from any dispute over children or money. Eventually he would like to remove “fault” and the need for couples to cite “unreasonable behaviour”. Anything that removes the adversarial nature of divorce is good for our emotional health, if not for the lifestyles of some lawyers.
Uncontested divorce is a good place to start, but there will always be conservatives who see anything that makes divorce “easier” as a fundamental attack on marriage. It is as though the only thing keeping married couples together is a fear of paperwork. The continual refrain that marriage is the ideal and those not in this institution are failures or inferior does not chime with the reality. Both our divorce rate and the number of children born outside marriage indicate that family patterns are changing, that different choices are made.
There is no threat to the happily married, and good for them. And will the unhappily married suddenly rush to get divorced because it may be slightly quicker? Of course not. This idea that marriage is undermined by making it slightly less time consuming to broker the end of a contract is unrealistic. As is the notion that if you make divorce more difficult for people, that they might reconcile. By the time many couples have decided to get divorced, many of them will have thought longer and harder about this than about the decision to get married. It is painful, but what undermines marriage are not reforms to divorce law. No, what undermines marriage are married people and the things married people do.
Source:- http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/22/divorce-out-of-courts-marriage
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