Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill (First sitting)

Victoria Prentis Excerpts

Committee Debate: 1st sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 2nd July 2019 Public Bill Committees

[Melanie Onn]

Q I have one final question. David, you mentioned flaws in the legislation, and you have also talked about the need for some amendments. Is there a danger, as we go through this process, that we end up in the same situation as in 1996, where there are multiple amendments and we make what is currently quite a simple piece of legislation far more complex than it needs to be?

David Hodson: From the legal profession, we desperately hope not. We want a simple process. Despite what may be thought, family lawyers try to settle all our cases. We try to deal with the crucial elements—issues regarding children and finance—but divorce is not a matter on which lawyers would want to spend any amount of time. We want it to go through smoothly.

Will it change the parliamentary process? We hope not. I agree with Nigel: we think the spirit of the age has changed since 1996. Our perception is of a far greater willingness to accept no-fault divorce from those categories that might not previously have been supportive. The changes that certainly the Law Society would like are not substantial; they do not change the structure or concept of a period over notice. They just try to protect the interest, particularly of the so-called respondents—the sole petition where the person may not have fully been expecting a petition to come through.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

Q Could you focus on children for a moment? What proportion of divorces involve children? How will the Bill promote their welfare?

Nigel Shepherd: I do not have the figures to hand, but I can certainly come back to you on that. Self-evidently, a very considerable number involve children under the age of 16. I am sure that is the case. Professor Liz Trinder may have the specific figures to hand. Clearly, children are at the heart of this process. As David said, as Resolution members and family lawyers doing the job properly we are trying all the time to help people focus on what really matters. The children are absolutely the first consideration in that. We know from the research that conflict is damaging to children. It is not necessarily divorce itself; it is the way you divorce. This Bill will help at the beginning to have a more constructive approach to that and help people focus on what matters.

David Hodson: It is curious. The reasons for a divorce do not reflect on children issues and they will not be dealt with in financial issues, and we do not deal with them. But it is the psychodynamic of the couple that every so often a client will say to one, three or four months under way, “I still resent the fact that I am the respondent. You do know that this is equally to blame,” and we say, “Yes, we do, but it won’t have any bearing on children or financing”. However many times we say it to our clients, there is a residual feeling in their mind: “How am I the respondent? I shouldn’t be. I may be partly to blame, but I’m not wholly to blame”. It is the black-and-white element that we have one petitioner and one respondent.

One of the things the legislation has to bring through is that we have to review how we call people in this process. It is the softer elements around the legislation that are as important as the harder elements. For example, let us not get rid of the idea of an applicant and a respondent; let us have “in the marriage of”, and let us name the parties. Even if one person applies for a divorce and the other one responds to it, let us call it a divorce between two people, without having a litigious element in the heading. I think Relate and others would also certainly want to support those softer elements, which are crucial to this process as Parliament and society look at amending this law.

Aidan Jones: From my perspective, the best I can do is quote one of our senior practice consultants, who says:

“The proposed legislation sends out a much healthier message for children. I have known plenty of couples over the years who have agreed together to separate, but one had to cite unreasonable behaviour and the other had to go along with it. This can cause issues. Blame is toxic and never helpful. A great deal of the work we do in the counselling room is around helping people to understand this and to take responsibility for their own actions. It is possible to have a healthy divorce. This legislation will make that easier to achieve”.

[Anna McMorrin (Cardiff North) (Lab)]

Q The new procedure will introduce a minimum clause between application and the conditional order. Can I begin by asking Aidan how the minimum pause between application and condition order will improve the wellbeing of couples and children in practice?

Aidan Jones: Between application and decree nisi?

--- Later in debate ---

[Melanie Onn]

Q Mrs Owens’ case brought this to prominence in recent years. How many other such cases have there been that I may have missed?

Professor Trinder: It is extremely unusual. About 2% of divorces in England and Wales intend to defend. Most of those cannot actually continue with that, and only about a dozen out of 100,000 cases go to a fully contested trial each year. Owens is the only case that we are aware of in the last two decades in which the decree has been refused. We also looked at defended cases and had a sample of 74, and none of those were upheld. It is worth noting that in those defended cases, most of them were not defences of the marriage. It was not somebody saying, “No, I don’t believe that my marriage has broken down.” Mostly, they were triggered by the law itself. People were objecting to the allegations of behaviour made against them, including what appear to be perpetrators who defended allegations of quite serious domestic abuse. Because the court tries to settle cases, rather than go to a fully contested hearing, what happened typically was that the particulars were stripped out, so the line went through references to very serious assaults and they were removed from the particulars.

[Victoria Prentis]

Q You heard the evidence from the previous panel about a barrier to divorce being the cost of the fee. Is that something you have any evidence for or opinion on?

Mandip Ghai: Yes, I would agree with that. Obviously, fee exemptions are available, but lots of people will not fall within the criteria to be exempt from the fee and will not be able to pay the £550. For survivors particularly, the option of sharing the fee with the respondent is not there, and even if she is able to get a costs order from the court to say that the respondent has to pay the court fee, usually he does not pay—

[Victoria Prentis]

Q So is the exemption system not working?

Mandip Ghai: Not yet. For a lot of people, it is not working.

Professor Trinder: I would add that we had interviewees in our sample who had been saving up for their divorce over several years. A couple of years ago, the fee went up from I think £410 to £550, literally overnight, and this man was in tears describing how he then had to start saving again. His divorce was almost in his grasp, after he had saved for several years, and then again taken away. The fees are very high—internationally, they are very high—and they are unaffordable for many people.

[The Chair]

I think we shall move to the Minister.