Divorce

The Government today announced (09/04/19) after years of avoiding a decision to make new provisions to enact “no fault divorce”. The current adversarial system means that husbands and wives had to allege adultery or unreasonable behaviour to start divorce proceedings immediately otherwise they had to wait for a minimum period of two years and prove … Read more

Divorce has always been a highly discretionary area of law and in a recent case the presumption of lifetime maintenance for one partner – usually the wife, has changed.  Courts are now much keener on terminating dependency by achieving a clean break in respect of all financial claims.  However, this is always easier where there … Read more

Baroness Hale of Richmond, President of the Supreme Court, has called for the introduction of no-fault divorces. Appearing at a conference of family law specialists in Bristol, she said that the current rules assigning fault to one party to a marriage can trigger unnecessary conflict and encourage people to accept unfair blame.  She also suggested … Read more

Sir James Munby, President of the Family Division, has warned that scores of newly-divorced couples may still be married because of mistakes ranging from submitting petitions too soon after marriage or officials approving divorces before the parties had spent enough time apart. A spokesman for Resolution, the national body of family lawyers, commented, “with the … Read more