Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill [HL]

Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia Excerpts

2nd reading & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 2nd reading (Hansard)
Wednesday 5th February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Shackleton of Belgravia (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Hunt, on her excellent maiden speech and I welcome her to your Lordships’ House. I listened very carefully to what everyone has said. I am a passionate believer in marriage. I am a patron of the Marriage Foundation. As noble Lords have probably realised, I am at the seedier end of this. I do not have the enjoyment that the right reverend Prelates have of marrying people, but rather am undoing that at the other end. It is a sad business for anyone who has to conduct it on a daily basis.

I am fortunate that in my 40-year career I have never had to do a defended divorce because I have been able to persuade my client or my opponent that that would lend itself to a pyrrhic victory. There is absolutely no point in resisting when one party has checked out of a marriage and insisting that you can continue it. You can control only your own behaviour, not that of your spouse.

Unfortunately, one of my partners did take a case where the result was a defended divorce and the decree was not given. As a consequence, the usual practice, which has gone on for years—and I have practised at the Hammersmith and Fulham Law Centre and at the top end of the game—was to collude with anodyne behaviour particulars that were ticked, which is what the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, referred to as a farce. The farce is now over because the law as handed down by the Supreme Court requires fault to be proven to such a high standard that you effectively have to trump up the behaviour to get your decree. In those circumstances, a stigma is attached which causes a lot of heartbreak and unnecessary grief at a time when many other things are to be sorted out, most importantly the children of any relationship, and the money.

Having listened to the contributions made, I fully support the Bill as beginning a review of the faults in our system of dissolving people’s failed relationships. No one has ever come to me saying that they are happy to be getting a divorce. Everybody regards divorce as a failure. When you are looking at the carcass of a broken marriage, it is better that people do not pick over it for ever. Because the law is so uncertain—and I am ashamed to say that I practise in it—there is an industry of contested ancillary relief. You cannot get a decree absolute and move on with your life without sorting out the children and the money. The Government urgently need to look at reform in relation to dealing with the consequences of finance. It is no good having a decree absolute while living in the same house as the person from whom you are trying to get divorced and separated. The court has too much discretion over the money, which means that more cases go to court than necessary.

I have another invitation for the Government. Over my 40-year career, at least 50% of people who I have advised have told me that they married the wrong person in the first place. Perhaps more thought should go into something other than counselling people when they realise that their marriages are on the rocks or done, although I do not discourage that at all. If it makes life easier, I welcome it, but prevention is better than cure. Could education spend a nanosecond on relationships, what you look into when you marry somebody and the fact that, like the proverbial dog being not just for Christmas, marriage is not just for the white dress? We educate children on sex, gender, alcohol and drugs, but half an hour in sixth form on permanent relationships when you are going to have children would be money very well spent.