Divorce (Financial Provision) Bill [HL]

Baroness Meacher Excerpts

Friday 27th June 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Meacher (CB)]

I rise to contribute briefly to this important debate and most particularly to applaud the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, for taking the initiative to raise awareness of the urgent need for reform of the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973. As she said, modern marriages are very different from those of the early 1970s, such as in the role of fathers in the family and often their very active involvement in childcare. Part-time and flexible working by both parents, increasingly common today, would have been inconceivable in the 1970s. The growth of nursery provision and after- school clubs for children of school age has enabled mothers to be far more involved in the workplace than in the past. All this has changed the financial relationship between couples.

There are couples who opt for a very traditional marriage where for perhaps 20 years the mother stays at home looking after the children and the father goes out to work. The law will have to take account of them.

One of the reasons why divorces are so detrimental to children is the long, drawn-out court battle that too often accompanies them. The judge-made law, largely based on big-money cases of little relevance to couples with limited resources, has created too much uncertainty and complexity, opening opportunities for barristers to fight over endless details on a wide range of issues, costing vast sums of money and creating many months of misery for the whole family. The lack of clarity in the law also makes mediation much more difficult and unlikely to succeed in most cases. Any involvement of the courts in financial settlements should be seen as a failure of the system and of the parents as well—but while the law remains as it is, parents are often driven into the courts very much against their will.

The removal of legal aid from this area of law has already been mentioned. It was rightly highlighted by the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, and other noble Lords as a factor adding to the urgency of the need for reform. I have recently been close to a case where the parents represented themselves. The initial judge, who was certainly no mathematician, clearly found the financial issues impossible to resolve. The initial judgment was completely unworkable. The result was that the whole thing was sorted out only a year later on appeal. This case was limited to financial issues, and in a clear legal context it should have been sorted out in a matter of weeks through mediation. Under the existing law, it took more than two years in all to sort out the financial matters.

I also warmly welcome the proposal of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, to limit periodical payments to three years or thereabouts. The current position, under which a divorce is a life sentence for the contributing party, cannot be right in the modern world. Yes, of course the lower earner needs time to adjust, but the contributing party also needs the prospect of a life free from the consequences of a failed marriage.

Finally, I strongly support the noble Baroness’s proposal that prenuptial and post-nuptial agreements should be binding. However, this has to be conditional on the parties having received independent legal advice—or at least having had the opportunity to do so—having made full disclosure and having entered the agreement a reasonable period before the marriage. All of that makes perfect sense to me. Ideally, this should become the normal route to a financial settlement, in which any glitches could be sorted out through mediation. I hope that the Government will allocate parliamentary time to this incredibly important, but in some ways fairly modest, Bill. It would transform the experience of divorce for many couples and save a great deal of misery and money.