Divorce Law

Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia Excerpts

Thursday 6th September 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I should like to reassure the noble Lord. Children are at the heart of many divorces, and we must ensure that orders as to where children spend their time or in terms of financial contributions are made with the children at their heart and are fair to both divorcing people.

[Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia (Con)]

As a practising divorce lawyer, I ask my noble friend what will go into the timetable. I do not think that there is a family in the land that is not affected by divorce somewhere along the line. To accelerate reform in relation to marriage breakdown is good, but it is not good when the people who are divorcing are still living in the same house because they have not sorted out the money. The money has to be sorted out. That is not fit for purpose. On many occasions, the Supreme Court has said, “Please can Parliament help?”. In Granatino, a case I was involved with about prenuptial contracts, it was found not to be in our statute that a prenuptial agreement should be given any weight—but still we wait for Parliament to do something.

This is not a party-political speech but a general view around the House. People from all sides of the House want the Bill of the noble Baroness, Lady Deech, in relation to the recognition of prenuptial contracts, to be looked at. Prenuptial contracts depend on what is fair. That is decided only when you know what the law says and, at the moment, it is not fit for purpose. It needs to be put on the agenda so that everybody can have their say and make it better.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

My Lords, the Government look forward to working with my noble friend and many others in your Lordships’ House—we recognise the expertise and experience contained therein. As proposals emerge, we will look for contributions from noble Lords to help us shape them further. I turn to my noble friend’s point about timing and mention the online divorce system that we set up in May 2018. It has had 11,000 applications. People can submit their forms online. It makes it quicker and easier to access justice and, as importantly, it means that the number of mistakes made on the forms is vastly reduced, thereby speeding up the whole process of divorce. I agree with my noble friend that we need to make it quicker, and we are doing something about it.