This post won Family Lore’s Post of the Month Award for November 2009.

Today I appeared on BBC Radio 4 Woman’s Hour in a debate with Baroness Ruth Deech about the subject of cohabitation.

Two years ago the Law Commission (of which I was a member of the Legal Advisory Group) recommended that on cohabitation breakdown a scheme should be introduced which would compensate a cohabitant who could establish economic loss as a consequence of the relationship. It was purely compensatory, and not intended to give a claimant a divorce type settlement, because, as was stressed in the report, there was no intention to equate cohabitation with marriage. This form of compensation is already law in Scotland and the government is awaiting feedback from the Scottish scheme in order to decide whether to introduce similar provision for the rest of the country. Earlier this year, Lord Lester’s Cohabitation Bill, which proposed reforms to protect cohabitees and their children from falling into poverty, was debated in the House of Lords.

The story has hit the news again this week, as Baroness Deech has given a lecture describing Lord Lester’s proposals for a cohabitation law as “a windfall for lawyers but for no one else except the gold digger”. She believes that cohabitation law could invite blackmail and bullying from former partners and that it “retards the emancipation of women”.

These latest offensive and unfair comments are, of course, particularly close to my heart.

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From the comment pages of the Yorkshire Post, 23/10/2009.

Divorced from reality in the 21st century

By Marilyn Stowe

WE should all be raising glasses this week to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Divorce Reform Act 1969 gaining royal assent.

The landmark statute made divorce easier, introducing what became known as “quickie divorces”. It eliminated the previous extensive, fault-based procedure, was a milestone for women’s rights, and its momentous implications are still being felt today.

On the statute’s birthday, however, I am horrified to note that the divorce wind now appears to be blowing in the opposite direction, with prominent commentators suggesting divorce should be made harder and settlements less favourable to ordinary women.    Continue reading >

Jonathan James’ post on the speech by Baroness Deech has attracted a good deal of angry comment from men, who criticize the courts for not upholding their marriage vows, because they did not wish to divorce. In civil law, marriage is regarded as a form of legal partnership, like any other. If one partner wishes to dissolve the marriage, therefore, even if the other does not, this must eventually happen.

But the pain these men obviously feel may be more positively focused elsewhere. In 1992, I wrote a book, “Divorce – A New Beginning”, calling for marriage, rather than divorce, to be made harder. When a marriage has broken down and love has gone, I wrote then and still believe, it should be swiftly ended with dignity and civility, in a process not focusing on the past.

But I also wrote that getting married is simply too easy and should become more difficult in law. I felt then that marriage had become too focused on the Big Day – the dress and the party – rather than what it means in law: a voluntary change of legal status, by consenting adults, to one of joint partnership, with all its incumbent obligations. This is something not to be entered into lightly. I was concerned then that the real meaning of marriage had been lost.

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Baroness Deech holds some strong views about divorce and financial settlements. The Times has reported that the academic lawyer, who chairs the Bar Standards Board, is to give a series of lectures this week. Her focus: the thorny issue of who gets what in terms of money after a divorce.  “It is no wonder that England is the divorce capital of Europe and out of step with other European countries,” she says.   Apparently she is going to argue that, put bluntly, women are getting too much, especially in the modern era of equal pay and opportunities in employment. 

The article concludes with a list of “big money” cases in which wives were given very substantial capital awards and maintenance after short marriages.

Given recent decisions such as Hvorostovsky v Hvorostovsky, one can see how all the excitement arises.  Mr Hvorostovsky finds, following a Court of Appeal, decision, that his maintenance liability should increase so that his former wife has some £37,500 per year more than she actually needs!  The reason for this increase was nothing more than the fact that the husband now has a much larger income of his own.  It is all too easy to assess the acute sense of grievance felt by such a husband, particularly where he presumably has to work very hard for this level of earnings where his former wife is able to live a life of leisure. 

The shortcoming of this debate is that it concerns a vanishingly small minority of cases.  Continue reading »