A History of Divorce Law

The timing of this book could not be more relevant, arriving on the shelves just as the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill is signed into law. This piece of legislation will allow married couples in England and Wales to secure a divorce without any requirement to assign blame for the breakdown of the relationship. Furthermore, the couple can apply together citing a mutual desire to end the legal relationship, with the intention of removing as much acrimony as possible. The Bill was drafted partly in response to the widely reported Supreme Court judgment in Owens v Owens (2018), a case that centred on interpretations of unreasonable behaviour. In the case Judgment, Lady Hale (then President of the Supreme Court) described the case as ‘very troubling’ not least because the original hearing did not allow the ‘cumulative effect of a great many small incidents said to be indicative of authoritarian, demeaning and humiliating conduct’ to be fully acknowledged. That said, Lady Hale went on, the Supreme Court’s role is to interpret the law as it stands, not to correct earlier errors and so the appeal must be dismissed. Lord Wilson noted in his judgment that ‘Parliament may wish to consider whether to replace a law which denies to Mrs. Owens any present entitlement to a divorce in the above circumstances’ (Judgment [2018] UKSC 41). Parliament did just that, with the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill also allowing a petition for divorce to be made regardless of whether their spouse agrees

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