1969 Divorce Reform Act
The 1969 Divorce Reform Act was a significant piece of legislation in the United Kingdom that made it easier for couples to obtain a divorce. It introduced the concept of irretrievable breakdown of marriage as the sole ground for divorce, allowing couples to divorce after a separation period of two years with mutual consent or five years without. This act marked a major shift in divorce law and had a lasting impact on family law in the UK.
7 Key excerpts on "1969 Divorce Reform Act"
eBook - ePub- Joanna Miles, Daniel Monk, Rebecca Probert, Joanna Miles, Daniel Monk, Rebecca Probert(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
...PART ONE Introduction 1 ‘Irretrievably Broken’? Introducing the Life-Story of the Divorce Reform Act 1969 JOANNA MILES, DANIEL MONK AND REBECCA PROBERT I. The 1969 Act: What It Did and Said, In Short By any measure, the passage of the Divorce Reform Act 1969 was a landmark moment in family law. It had a significant impact on legal practice and saw a dramatic increase in divorce. It also had symbolic significance, reflecting changes in social attitudes. But the law’s inherent tensions also exhibited prevailing contestations about public morality, conflicting ideals of citizenship and ambivalence about the reforms. And alongside and in keeping with the other key ‘permissive’ reforms of the era (in particular, the decriminalisation of abortion and ‘homosexuality’ in 1967), radical change went hand in hand with a degree of continuity. The Act, codified quite soon after its enactment into Part I of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, enshrined the principle that a divorce could be granted if the marriage had ‘broken down irretrievably’. Before the Act’s passage, almost all divorces had been granted on one of three fault-based grounds: adultery, cruelty and desertion. 1 Of these, cruelty and desertion had only been available as grounds for divorce for a little over 30 years. 2 Previously, adultery had been the sole basis on which a husband could divorce his wife...
eBook - ePub- Frances Burton(Author)
- 2015(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...This was backed up by the Church, which said that the doctrine of the matrimonial offence was in accordance with the New Testament and that any change would threaten society and the stability and structure of the family. Happily their stance is now much changed on this point so that it is difficult to see how any religious objection, which historically appears to have arrived very late on the scene, should now stand in the way of a no-fault divorce system, especially as even in the 1960s the Church was quick to reconsider, setting up a working group which reported in 1966. The Archbishop of Canterbury’s research group report, entitled Putting Asunder – A Divorce Law for Contemporary Society, 8 drew three main conclusions: (1) that the Church should cooperate with the State in recognising a secular divorce law, subject to protection of the weak and strengthening the law to support Christian marriage; (2) that the existing mix of fault-based and non-fault-based grounds (such as insanity) was inept; and (3) that the courts should inquire thoroughly into whether a marriage had broken down and, if so, dissolve it. They also recommended that the basic ground for divorce should be irretrievable breakdown. 4.5 The Divorce Reform Act (DRA) 1969 Following the Archbishop’s Group Report, the Law Commission undertook a thorough inquiry into divorce law. Its report was entitled Reform of the Grounds of Divorce – The Field of Choice 9 with a twin goal: to support marriages which had a chance of survival and to bury with decency and expedition those which were already dead ‘with the minimum of embarrassment, humiliation and bitterness’...
eBook - ePub- Elisa Giunchi, Elisa Giunchi(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Marriage and divorce in the UK result in significant legal rights and responsibilities, from financial to familial, and regulation of marital status is designed to administer these rights and responsibilities as objectively as possible (i.e. devoid of factors such as gender and religion insofar as they are irrelevant). Consequently, divorce law in the United Kingdom is governed by the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 (MCA 1973), as amended, which requires the divorcing person to state one of the grounds for divorce under on the ‘irretrievable breakdown of marriage’ (MCA 1973 s. 1(1)); these are adultery, unreasonable behaviour, desertion, two-year separation with the consent of the respondent, and five-year separation. British law, both case law and legislation (and including family law), is influenced by the concept of ‘reasonableness’, a notion deeply embedded in the common law. Reasonableness gives legal effect to the ordinary conduct of human affairs, so that actions well outside the normal conduct of a ‘reasonable man’ cannot be justified in law. Though a concept that works relatively well within the jurisdiction where it was conceived, understanding ‘reasonableness’ against the philosophy and practice of entirely different jurisdictions, such as those under Islamic law, becomes far more complicated, as will be explored. The recognition of foreign divorces British recognition of foreign divorces is governed by ss. 44–54 of the Family Law Act 1986 (FLA 1986). Relevant provisions (which will be cited and referred to throughout) are paraphrased below: s. 44 – no divorce will be effective within the British Islands unless granted by a court of civil jurisdiction s. 45 – the validity of an overseas divorce (that is, one obtained outside the British Islands) will be subjected to ss. 46–49 of the FLA 1986. s...
eBook - ePubA History of Divorce Law
Reform in England from the Victorian to Interwar Years
- Henry Kha(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The Act abolished the double standard and equalised the grounds of divorce between genders. 166 Thereby, it allowed married women to divorce on the sole ground of the husband’s adultery without having to prove a cause of aggravated enormity. The Liberal (later Conservative) MP Major Cyril Entwistle introduced the bill in the House of Commons 167 after being lobbied by the National Union of Societies for Equal Citizenship (NUSEC). 168 In order to dispel any concern about the liberalisation of divorce, Entwistle stated at the outset, ‘The sole object of this Bill is to give equality to gender in the matter of divorce, and it has no other purpose whatsoever.’ 169 The DLRU was not completely satisfied with the limited scope of the Act but supported it nonetheless. 170 It overwhelmingly passed the Second Reading in the House of Commons by 257 votes to 26, 171 and the Second Reading in the House of Lords by 95 votes to 8. 172 The Act came into effect on 18 July 1923. It was the Conservative government’s attempt to satisfy some of the demands of the divorce law reformers, but to keep marriage as an indissoluble contract that could only be broken through adultery. In 1924, Buckmaster attempted to re-introduce his 1920 bill. 173 Although the bill passed its Second Reading by 88 votes to 51, 174 the Labour government, which had more nominal than actual power in Parliament, did not support the bill and it made no further progress. The Labour Party won 191 out of 615 seats at the 1923 general election, which delivered a minority Labour government led by Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald that lasted only ten months with the tacit support of the Liberal Party. 175 The bill was the last legislative attempt at major reform to the divorce law in the 1920s. The Matrimonial Causes Act 1923 effectively delayed calls for further divorce law reform...
eBook - ePubThe Church of England and Divorce in the Twentieth Century
Legalism and Grace
- Ann Sumner Holmes(Author)
- 2016(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The possibility that either partner could petition to terminate the contract began to appear more reasonable. Reformers who wanted to extend the grounds for divorce beyond adultery found support in the literature and shifting social attitudes of the 1890s. Authors such as Thomas Hardy, George Bernard Shaw, John Galsworthy, and H. G. Wells frequently presented marriage as repressive; they criticized laws and social conventions that stifled the individual. At the same time sexual theorists challenged Victorian attitudes by questioning the belief that marriage was the only legitimate context for the expression of human sexual desires. Havelock Ellis and Edward Carpenter were among those who criticized divorce laws that forced unhappily married individuals to remain legally joined to one another. This emphasis on individual happiness contradicted the traditional argument that ‘hard cases make bad law’. As long as the family was seen as the foundation of society, as it was in Victorian England, then divorce threatened social stability. The potential conflict between the happiness of the individual and the welfare of the community would be central to the debate over divorce reform throughout the twentieth century and was certainly apparent in the testimony that was heard before the Royal Commission on Divorce appointed in 1909. Archbishop Randall Davidson and the Appointment of the Royal Commission on Divorce Randall Davidson, who became the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1903, played an influential role in the selection of members of the Royal Commission that convened in 1910. Davidson operated from a Victorian background that did not limit the leadership of the Archbishop of Canterbury to ecclesiastical affairs. He had served as Chaplain and Private Secretary to Archbishop Tait and had married Tait’s daughter Edith...
eBook - ePubGender Roles in Ireland
Three Decades of Attitude Change
- Margret Fine-Davis(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...The fifteenth amendment to the Constitution repealed the constitutional prohibition on divorce and was signed into law in 1996. Several authors have analysed and discussed the 1995 referendum (e.g. Adshead, 1996; Crowley, 2011; Fahey, 2012) including the impact that the legalisation of divorce had on marital breakdown. Both Burley and Regan (2002) and Fahey (2012) agree that the enactment of divorce legislation did not lead to an increase in marital breakdown: “the divorce and family breakdown floodgates have not been opened” (Burley and Regan, 2002, p. 202) and “at least in the first five years, relatively few Irish people applied for divorce” (ibid.). Fahey (2012) argues that by 1995 the nature of the family had changed so much that the legislation did little to facilitate family change other than to make re-marriage possible. Other ways of dealing with marital breakdown had increased before divorce was introduced and hence, when it was, “There was no post-divorce ‘spike’ in marital breakdown rates which is usually said to have followed the easing of divorce law in other countries” (ibid., p. 244). Fahey further observes that parallel developments in social policy had accommodated non-marital families, which had become more normative, and as a result the status of marriage itself had weakened (Fahey, 2012). These changes were accompanied by an increase in non-marital births, lone parenthood and an increase in cohabitation (Lunn, Fahey and Hannan, 2009). Apart from its potential effect on marital breakdown, Adshead (1996) observed that the Referendum was noteworthy “for the changes it signaled in other aspects of the Republic’s political life” including the position of the Catholic Church: Neither the traditionalists nor the modernizers can claim victory in the Irish divorce referendum. Amongst all players, perhaps the Catholic Church was the greatest loser...
eBook - ePub- Sarah McKibbin, Libby Connors, Marcus Harmes(Authors)
- 2021(Publication Date)
- Hart Publishing(Publisher)
...Before this time a marriage was capable of dissolution only by a private Act of Parliament. The church courts had granted only annulments, but they could not grant divorces. The 1857 Act authorised a secular court to dissolve a marriage without the involvement of the church courts or, indeed, Parliament. In stripping the matrimonial jurisdiction from the church courts, the Act established in its place a court of record called the Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes. As part of these reforms, the probate jurisdiction of the church courts transferred to a new Court of Probate, one that dealt with wills and intestate estates. The new Court for Divorce and Matrimonial Causes had jurisdiction to grant a decree of divorce where: Annulments (Latin): declarations that a marriage had not existed in law • the husband proved his wife’s adultery; or • the wife proved her husband’s adultery together with an act of ‘aggravated enormity’, such as bigamy or incest, on the husband’s part. 2 The dissolution of marriage by judicial means rather than by private Act of Parliament might have expedited the process of divorce and made it relatively cheaper, but hardships continued. The costs associated with divorce proceedings still placed divorce beyond the means of most. 3 Petitioners were upper and middle class and, given the Divorce Court’s location in London, drawn from London and the Home Counties – the counties surrounding London. 4 While adultery alone supported the husband petitioner, the grounds on which women could obtain divorce were conservatively framed. The Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 maintained a ‘double moral standard’ for women. 5 A wife had to prove the husband’s adultery coupled with an act of ‘aggravated enormity’, which included incest, bigamy, cruelty and two years’ desertion...
