MAKING FATHERS PAY

Vicki Woods thinks the Government is half right in enforcing

maintenance for single mothers, but that they manage these things better in Iceland

FIFTEEN years ago, the Princess Royal floated down the aisle on the arm of her father, to be 'given in marriage' to a haunted-looking tin soldier with a big Adam's apple and a rictus of nerves. She looked unusually lovely in her becoming cloud of white, and every woman in my office was smiling fondly at the portable telly. 'Those whom God hath joined together, let no man put asunder.' Fanfare. Curtseys. But I was in a black cloud of im- agined gloom on Anne's behalf. I m- agined that the benefits of the 1969 Di- vorce Reform Act, which had done more to emancipate women and make them equal before the law than any other legisla- tion since the woman's franchise, would pass the Princess by. She'll never be able to get divorced like other women, I tried to explain to the sentimentalists. She's clearly making an appalling mistake in marrying him, and because she's royal, she'll have to live with it until she dies. The Queen would never allow a divorce. I reminded them of (Young, beautiful, tragic) Princess Mar- garet's plangently worded statement, the Poignancy of which catches my breath to this day: 'Mindful of the Church's teaching that Christian marriage is indissoluble . . and of my duty to the Commonwealth . . . I have decided not to marry Group- Captain Peter Townsend.' Autres temps, autres moeurs. The Queen, clearly not the woman I took her for, has allowed a statistically significant percentage of her immediate family (Margaret, Anne) to divorce — or in Anne's case to 'legally separate', which is code for divorce. Both these royal ladies, therefore, join the nearly two million single-parent families who have become this Government's most urgent concern.

Divorce has been a problem for centur- ies, but until 20 years ago the biggest problems were (a) that none but the rich could afford to obtain one, and (b) no matter how much you wanted one, you might not get one if you asked for one; though you had to pay the lawyers anyway. It's odd to look back over such a short space of time and remember how women fought to get divorced. They weren't fight- ing their estranged husbands so much as fighting the court itself, standing alone and vulnerable in the witness-box and being asked rude questions about bedroom mat- ters by snappy lawyers. We were all, except for divorce lawyers, less used to discussing bedroom matters openly -in those days than we are now, and petition- ers had to blush through some pretty ghastly marital faults (`mental cruelty') in open court before the Divorce Reform Act of 1969.

After which, reform followed on reform until, by the time I was mistakenly sym- pathising with Princess Anne for the apparently irrevocable steps she was taking down the aisle in 1974, a whirlwind had blown all the 'problems' away. Petitioners no longer had to stand in a witness-box rehearsing miserable litanies of sex with and without tears. The lengthy judicial procedures of divorce, the fighting for and proving and finally being granted the legal ending of the marriage itself, gave way to purely administrative ones; and what were formerly treated as 'ancillary matters' the division of property, maintenance and, of course, children — became the main event. You could have a 'paper divorce', a `quickie', you could have a 112 DIY divorce', you could have a 'Casanova's Charter' (whereby you could be granted a divorce if you asked for one after five years' separation, even if your spouse wanted to stay married). And it wasn't just feminist left-wingers who approved of the reforms. People of the upper-middling sort were quick to grasp the benefits of reform. I became scandalously pregnant while un- married and working on Harpers & Queen in the mid-Seventies. Mrs Betty Kenward of 'Jennifer's Dairy' patted my hand. She cited the case of 'good old Jimmy' (Gold- smith) and told me to tell my married lover to 'put in for one of those Casanova's Charters as soon as the five years are up'. She added that I should put the baby's name down for a good school pdq, as well. `By the time you're walking up the drive to meet the headmaster, you'll be married, my dear. Believe me.' Reader, I was.

I don't mean to suggest that because divorce is now easy to obtain, it is at all easy to undergo.

There are other reforms that should be undertaken on behalf of people struggling to separate into two establishments after being one for some years. Divorce law in England and Wales is unbelievably, some- times unbearably intricate, even within the intricate tangle of the English legal system itself, and some of the bitterest battles now fought in divorce courts are fought over property. We have a Scot for Lord Chan- cellor in Lord Mackay of Clashfern, and I had hoped that, by now, he would have had the tight little Scottish system of matrimonial property division put into place in England and Wales, on the off- chance that I might ever need it. Scots law, since the Family Law (Scotland) Act 1985, clearly separates 'matrimonial property' from the rest, and on divorce only mat- rimonial property is divided. Usually 50- 50. Matrimonial property is what the cou- ple have put together during their mar- riage, including a house. Any other prop- erty, which spouses might have owned before they married, or received indi- vidually during the marriage by gift or inheritance, or may inherit at some future date, doesn't count and isn't divided. English law puts all property, his, hers and ours, into the pot and makes an ad hoc decision as to how to share it out. Some- times the decisions make one blink.

Neatly tailored reforms such as these, which might be undertaken on behalf of hard-headed women like me and the Prin- cess Royal, are not what is agitating the Government's policy-makers this autumn. There is a growing and unstoppable feeling in the Party of the Family that divorce has been reformed quite enough; that it's been made far too easy; and that instead of benignly watching couples end their mar- riages quickly, easily and cheaply, the Government ought to be making it harder for them to separate. Why is this? Because 85 per cent of divorced mothers end up on State benefit. Because lone parents and their children make up more than half of the very poor. Because manual workers bring divorce proceedings at four times the rate of professional couples. 'Thus,' as Professor Lawrence Stone's extremely thick and interesting book Road to Di- vorce, England 1530-1987, points out, 'di- vorce, which for centuries had been a privilege exclusively confined to the rich has now become a legal device most commonly used by the poor.'

And by women. Professor Stone's book is a real horror story for a woman to read. For centuries, married women were chat- tels; had no legal personality; couldn't bring lawsuits; couldn't divorce the most debauched of husbands for persistent adul- tery; couldn't own property, even their own property; lost custody of their children on divorce, even unweaned infants, even if they were themselves innocent of any marital fault; and so forth and so forth. It was the slow reform of the divorce laws that established married women as equal to men before the law. Women have reason to be grateful to divorce law reformers, who also established mothers as the natural guardians of their children, so that by 1886 it had become morally accepted that it was only right to grant custody of young children to their mother. Now, three quar- ters of all divorce petitions are brought by women, and seven out of ten of these women (whether they're destitute, merely poor or wealthy enough not to worry) receive no maintenance for their children from their former husbands. Hence this week's White Paper.

The Prime Minister, the world's most responsible housekeeper, said last week in the Commons: 'Sometimes fathers walk out on their families. They must not be allowed to walk out on their financial responsibilities. Otherwise, conscientious families have to meet not only the costs of looking after their own families but the cost of those who walk out on their responsibilities.'

Margaret Thatcher, in her curiously per- suasive, plain-spoken way, is both abso- lutely right and way off-beam here. It is true, of course, that 'sometimes fathers walk out on their families' and their families are bereft if they do. They suffer physical and emotional loss. How unargu- ably right it is to take steps to ensure that they need not suffer financial loss as well. Welfare organisations representing di- vorced and separated families (mostly women) have been working happily with government agencies on how to make deserting fathers more responsible to their children for a while now. They fancied something on the Australian model, where the man is traceable via the Inland Re- venue; maintenance (at a lowish level) is calculated as a percentage of his income for each child, lifted direct from his wage- packet and paid to his former wife. If he has subsequent children by a second mar- riage, he pays less to the children of his first marriage.

What have they got in today's White Paper? A system much tougher than this, and one that's left the welfare organisa- tions gasping. An 'errant father' will have to pay a steepish proportion of his income (up to 50 per cent, in some cases, of his disposable income) to his former wife, so that the Department of Social Security can then cut her benefits, LI. for £1. This is a system designed to reduce the Treasury's benefit bill rather than improve the income of lone-parent families. Why the sudden change? The Treasury was perfectly pre- pared to pay for single-parent families when there were fewer of them. Now they are such wanton hordes, the Treasury is changing the principle. (Nearly two million children live with only one parent, whether their mother is divorced or simply never married.) The Treasury's system will in- furiate or embarrass the men who have to pay, because their employers will have to collect and disburse the money via an automatic earnings attachment, which is a horribly public alternative to the Inland Revenue. And, most irritatingly, it's a system that thrusts women and children right back on to financial dependency on a man — even unmarried women.

The Department of Social Security last week froze lone-parent benefit. A freeze is effectively a cut: therefore most lone mothers can start the new system by asking their errant former husbands for a rise in maintenance to offset the cut, but few people noticed because of the hoo-ha over the raising of child benefit for the first child by £1. Note that the 'first child' in a family now means 'the father's first child by his first marriage'. The first child of his second family (that is, his second wife's first child) doesn't count as a first child, thus standing on the head the idea that child benefit is a benefit to mothers. I know all the argu- ments about universal child benefit, but I would fight to keep it. I'm the mother around here and I buy their shoes with it. I won't get the extra £1, because my first child is my husband's third child.

I suppose I am part of a group of traditionally Tory voters left smarting by the White Paper: second wives. Four out of five divorced men remarry pretty smartly after their divorce. Second wives, the clever things, seem on the whole to work for their living rather harder than first wives are expected to. We have a wonder- ful role model in the Prime Minister, the second Mrs Denis Thatcher. Second wives have long held to the suspicion that 'di- vorce' doesn't exist in English law, unless the divorcing couple is childless. 'Divorce' meaning 'an end to the marriage'. You can't 'end' a marriage that the Government is tying to your tail with attachment of earnings for decades to come. Second wives also understand the nuances of meaning that are covered by the word `marry'. They know the difference between marrying firstly and marrying secondly or subsequently, and while they may not want to feel like helpless, utterly dependent Victorian angels of the house (first wife), they don't want to feel like junior members of the harem either, which is easily done under English law. Why do seven out of ten divorced women receive no money from the former spouse? In the main, because they didn't ask for it. The very poor are always advised that maintenance is a constant problem to collect, doesn't rise automatically to keep pace with inflation, costs you money and a court appearance every time you want it raised, and would not be as emotionally helpful as a 'clean break'. Women with means don't want maintenance, can't bear to argue for it, 'wouldn't demean myself to ask him for a penny piece', as one told in of the alcoholic philanderer she was glad to see the back of. They want a 'clean break', too.

`You've got to remember that if you father a child, you have a responsibility for life,' I keep hearing Tony Newton say; but all my instincts tell me that that's paterna- listic nonsense. 'Fathering a child' is not the same as being a father, and the Government cannot make men behave like fathers by simply ordering them to give a child's mother money. A quarter of all children born each year are illegitimate. A man can 'father' a child in a matter of minutes. Does the future mother then shout 'You're nicked!' and ask for a blood sample for the genetic finger-printing? Does the accidental or unwilling father then have to cough up for the school anorak and the Mutant Hero Turtle pencil- case for the next two decades? A lone woman who has a child can find that she cares very much for her child, but doesn't give a damn for the man who carelessly fathered it. Only a very stupid — or a very old-fashioned — woman would insist that he pay for his pleasure in hard cash for years, but unmarried women are going to be asked to name the guilty men or have their benefits reduced.

In Iceland, there is a very high propor- tion of illegitimate births. Icelanders are friendly people and the winter nights are long. Carelessly fathered children in Ice- land have a protective, even feminist gov- ernment to look after them, presided over by the charming Mrs Vigdis Finnbogadot- tir. If women in Iceland name the father of an illegitimate child, the father is traced, which isn't difficult, and asked for child support. Recalcitrant fathers who are un- willing to pay may be packed off to a farm in some remote part, in order to think things over. They usually come round. I cannot work out why it is that a system which is almost identical to Tony Newton's sounds harsh and punitive in Britain, and charming and admirable in Iceland. It can only be that behind Mr Newton's system lurks the toughest woman who ever walked the earth, and I wish she would stop being so horribly patriarchal.