Most divorce decisions aren't based on what you, your future ex-spouse, or a judge think would be fair. And in divorce court, arguing about whether. And in divorce court, arguing if something is fair is often a waste of time. Divorce court decisions are made by applying laws and decisions from cases prior to the facts presented at your trial.
In fact, there's a scientific reason why everyone thinks divorce is unfair. And it's especially true when the parties HATE each other. In fact, the more I hate, the more unfair everything is. Divorce is a costly battlefield, and our outdated laws aren't fit for purpose.
It's no wonder that marriage continues to lose popularity. For the time being, our judicial system continues to consider the absurd concept of fault, in which a party has to take responsibility for a breakdown. He argued that a wife should not have any rights to property in a marriage lasting less than three years; in a longer marriage, only assets acquired during the time they were together should be divided. Alimony should not be paid to women, unless they are unable to work or have small children to care for, and it must end if the woman begins to live with another man.
“I had an overwhelmingly positive response, which was quite surprising because I've been saying the same thing for 30 years,” he says. What do you think has changed? The position of women in society. If women rightly expect equality in pay, employment and education, there is a difficulty in balancing that with the way they are presented in divorce courts. And doesn't what Deech says devalue the role of women who leave work to raise their children? “I didn't quit my job,” he says.
There are a lot of women who can't afford to quit their jobs, so I think for those who do, it's largely a lifestyle choice. And they tend to be rich, so I don't know how much childcare, housework, and laundry do anyway. The reaction to these women is also disproportionate. We can believe that a woman hasn't earned her million-pound deal just because she was married to a rich man, but what is never talked about is whether she actually “earned” her fortune in the city or anywhere.
Charlotte Butruille-Cardew, a French-English divorce lawyer, describes an absurd situation in which couples literally run to court to file a divorce petition first. UK has become extremely attractive with regard to financial rewards given to wives, says. He has seen situations where a French couple living in the UK, or a Frenchman with an English wife, has decided to divorce and the husband's lawyers will get on the next Eurostar to Paris to file a petition in a French court before the wife can file theirs before an English court. It's not just foreigners or the very rich who buy.
According to research by a Manchester firm, Pannone, there were disparities between prizes awarded in courts in different parts of the country, which they described as a lottery of divorce courts. He found that judges in the south of England were more generous with wives than those in the north. In theory, anyone can issue a petition anywhere in England and Wales; the other partner can ask to move to their place of residence. Lawyers will advise clients where they can get the best deal.
And here, Julius says, is where Deech has been so wrong. The point is not whether British divorce laws are unfair to men; this, he says disdainfully, is the kind of language of a family fight in the kitchen. The real problem, Julius says, is the excessive discretion that courts have. Sometimes it works in favor of the husband, sometimes the wife, but the real injustice lies in the unpredictability of the judge's decision.
But family structures do. Family lawyers have long called for an update of divorce laws, as they have barely changed for 40 years. This week, it was reported that ministers were drawing up plans to force divorcing couples to consider mediation before going to court, which has strong support among family lawyers. Another process called collaborative law is also becoming popular, in which the couple is represented by a lawyer and they try to reach an agreement.
Newbury has also been surprised by the number of men who have come to him in search of settlements and support for their wives, who are the breadwinners of the family. Agreements are different, but wives who pay support to their ex-husbands is virtually unheard of, says. I think the view is that unless the husband is elderly or sick, men can and should support themselves. To answer the question Are divorce laws unfair to men? , the answer is no.
Although a judge may have certain prejudices, according to the law, men and women are treated equally in a divorce. Thirty years later, the myth of good divorce has not been well maintained in the face of sustained social scientific research, especially when considering the well-being of children exposed to parental divorces. At that moment, the door opened in the back of the courtroom and a lawyer I recognized came in with some papers to submit. In 1962, as Whitehead points out in his book The Divorce Culture, about half of American women agreed with the idea that when there are children in the family, parents should stay together even if they don't get along.
However, in the years since 1980, these trends have not continued on straight paths and the history of divorce has become increasingly complicated. Although divorce in general has declined since the 1970s, what sociologist Steven Martin calls a divorce gap has also been growing between those with a college degree and those who do not (a distinction that often translates into income differentials as well). Increases in women's employment, as well as feminist awareness, also helped to increase the divorce rate, as wives felt freer in the late 60s and 70s to leave marriages that were abusive or unsatisfactory to them. Under the law that controls the case, a pension earned by one of the spouses during the marriage belongs equally to both spouses.
A recent Bowling Green State University study on the motives for cohabitation found that young men and women who choose to cohabit are looking for alternatives to marriage and ways to test a relationship to see if it could safely transform into a marriage, with both reasons clearly shaped by the. fear. of divorce. Such consideration would add a measure of justice to the current divorce process; it would also discourage some divorces, since spouses who would otherwise seek an easy way out could avoid a divorce that would harm them financially or limit their access to their children.
Of course, the reason that 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. A few days later, when the husband appeared in court, I told him that I would not grant a divorce unless he took his wife to court to see if she understood that she was giving up her legal interests worth several hundred thousand dollars. But for him, that means women must support themselves with jobs after divorce, demanding less from their ex-husbands. And the negative effects of divorce for adults tend to fall disproportionately on the shoulders of parents.
It should become an institution that functions in a modern society with equality laws, a society that treats women not as breeders, makers of houses or goods, but as contributing partners in a business. . .
