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The Government confirmed in April that divorce law in England and Wales would be changing, with the introduction of no fault divorce. This means that couples will be able to get divorced without one person needing to lay blame on the other. This change will also apply to civil partnership dissolution.
Here is a breakdown of what the divorce law reforms will look like and how no fault divorce will work after these changes have come into effect. The most important element of no fault divorce is, of course, the removal of fault or blame from the divorce process. This means that if the couple agrees to a divorce and the divorce is amicable or uncontested , there won't be a requirement for one person to blame the other for the breakdown of the marriage.
Under current laws, one spouse needs to issue divorce proceedings against the other. The person who starts the divorce is called the petitioner and the other person is called the respondent. Under the no fault divorce system, both people will be able to make the application jointly. Find out how to start a divorce now as a petitioner or a respondent.
A minimum timeframe of 20 weeks 4. This 'period of reflection' will give couples an opportunity to reflect and work through their differences before committing to a divorce. The new divorce process will still involve the two stages of decree nisi and decree absolute, but the names of these will change. The decree nisi will become a conditional order of divorce and the decree absolute will become the final order of divorce.
Another option for couples is to enter into a separation agreement , which is a written agreement outlining the terms of the separation. Research also indicates that remarriage is no salve for children wounded by divorce. Indeed, as sociologist Andrew Cherlin notes in his important new book, The Marriage-Go-Round , "children whose parents have remarried do not have higher levels of well-being than children in lone-parent families.
Often, the establishment of a step-family results in yet another move for a child, requiring adjustment to a new caretaker and new step-siblings — all of which can be difficult for children, who tend to thrive on stability. The divorce revolution's collective consequences for children are striking. Taking into account both divorce and non-marital childbearing, sociologist Paul Amato estimates that if the United States enjoyed the same level of family stability today as it did in , the nation would have , fewer children repeating grades, 1.
Skeptics confronted with this kind of research often argue that it is unfair to compare children of divorce to children from intact, married households. They contend that it is the conflict that precedes the divorce, rather than the divorce itself, that is likely to be particularly traumatic for children.
Amato's work suggests that the skeptics have a point: In cases where children are exposed to high levels of conflict — like domestic violence or screaming matches between parents — they do seem to do better if their parents part. But more than two-thirds of all parental divorces do not involve such highly conflicted marriages. And "unfortunately, these are the very divorces that are most likely to be stressful for children," as Amato and Alan Booth, his colleague at Penn State University, point out.
In the wake of their parents' divorce, children are also likely to experience a family move, marked declines in their family income, a stressed-out single mother, and substantial periods of paternal absence — all factors that put them at risk. In other words, the clear majority of divorces involving children in America are not in the best interests of the children.
Not surprisingly, the effects of divorce on adults are more ambiguous. Adults who initiated a divorce are especially likely to report that they are flourishing afterward, or are at least doing just fine.
Spouses who were unwilling parties to a unilateral divorce, however, tend to do less well. And the ill effects of divorce for adults tend to fall disproportionately on the shoulders of fathers. Since approximately two-thirds of divorces are legally initiated by women, men are more likely than women to be divorced against their will. In many cases, these men have not engaged in egregious marital misconduct such as abuse, adultery, or substance abuse.
They feel mistreated by their ex-wives and by state courts that no longer take into account marital "fault" when making determinations about child custody, child support, and the division of marital property. Yet in the wake of a divorce, these men will nevertheless often lose their homes, a substantial share of their monthly incomes, and regular contact with their children.
For these men, and for women caught in similar circumstances, the sting of an unjust divorce can lead to downward emotional spirals, difficulties at work, and serious deteriorations in the quality of their relationships with their children. Looking beyond the direct effects of divorce on adults and children, it is also important to note the ways in which widespread divorce has eroded the institution of marriage — particularly, its assault on the quality, prevalence, and stability of marriage in American life.
In the s, proponents of easy divorce argued that the ready availability of divorce would boost the quality of married life, as abused, unfulfilled, or otherwise unhappy spouses were allowed to leave their marriages.
Had they been correct, we would expect to see that Americans' reports of marital quality had improved during and after the s. Instead, marital quality fell during the '70s and early '80s.
So marital quality dropped even as divorce rates were reaching record highs. What happened? It appears that average marriages suffered during this time, as widespread divorce undermined ordinary couples' faith in marital permanency and their ability to invest financially and emotionally in their marriages — ultimately casting clouds of doubt over their relationships.
For instance, one study by economist Betsey Stevenson found that investments in marital partnerships declined in the wake of no-fault divorce laws.
Ironically, then, the widespread availability of easy divorce not only enabled "bad" marriages to be weeded out, but also made it more difficult for "good" marriages to take root and flourish. Second, marriage rates have fallen and cohabitation rates have surged in the wake of the divorce revolution, as men and women's faith in marriage has been shaken.
Yet at the same time, the number of cohabiting couples increased fourteen-fold — from , to more than 6. And because cohabiting unions are much less stable than marriages, the vast majority of the children born to cohabiting couples will see their parents break up by the time they turn A recent Bowling Green State University study of the motives for cohabitation found that young men and women who choose to cohabit are seeking alternatives to marriage and ways of testing a relationship to see if it might be safely transformed into a marriage — with both rationales clearly shaped by a fear of divorce.
One young man told the researchers that living together allows you to "get to know the person and their habits before you get married. So that way, you won't have to get divorced. My own research confirms the connection between divorce and cohabitation in America. Thus divorce has played a key role in reducing marriage and increasing cohabitation, which now exists as a viable competitor to marriage in the organization of sex, intimacy, childbearing, and even child-rearing.
Third, the divorce revolution has contributed to an intergenerational cycle of divorce. Children of divorce who marry other children of divorce are especially likely to end up divorced, according to Wolfinger's work. Of course, the reason children of divorce — especially children of low-conflict divorce — are more likely to end their marriages is precisely that they have often learned all the wrong lessons about trust, commitment, mutual sacrifice, and fidelity from their parents.
Clearly, the divorce revolution of the s and '70s left a poisonous legacy. But what has happened since? Where do we stand today on the question of marriage and divorce? A survey of the landscape presents a decidedly mixed portrait of contemporary married life in America.
The good news is that, on the whole, divorce has declined since and marital happiness has largely stabilized.
The divorce rate fell from a historic high of Perhaps even more important, recent declines in divorce suggest that a clear majority of children who are now born to married couples will grow up with their married mothers and fathers. Similarly, the decline in marital happiness associated with the tidal wave of divorce in the s and '70s essentially stopped more than two decades ago.
This good news can be explained largely by three key factors. First, the age at first marriage has risen. In , the median age of marriage was This means that fewer Americans are marrying when they are too immature to forge successful marriages. It is true that some of the increase in age at first marriage is linked to cohabitation, but not the bulk of it.
Second, the views of academic and professional experts about divorce and family breakdown have changed significantly in recent decades. Social-science data about the consequences of divorce have moved many scholars across the political spectrum to warn against continuing the divorce revolution, and to argue that intact families are essential, especially to the well-being of children.
Here is a characteristic example, from a recent publication by a group of scholars at the Brookings Institution and Princeton University:.
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