0 Towards a Bigamy Bill?
q February, the Divorce Reform Bill in- roduced by a Labour private member, Mr ilson, was granted a second reading by a ajority of ninety-six, but then died through ark of parliamentary time. Now, reintro- ueed in almost identically the same form Y another Labour private member, Mr ones, it has won its second reading by a ajority of seventy-seven, and with the overnment's blessing it can now be assured enough time to become law before the urnmer recess next year. That greater familiarity with the Bill 'Intild have bred a reduced majority is rcely surprising. There is, first, the matter what the Bill does not do. It has been 'aimed that the Bill does away with the 1d-fashioned and artificial legal concept of e 'matrimonial offence,' creating instead, the sole ground for divorce, the fact of e breakdown of the marriage. This is tzply playing with words. The concept of e matrimonial offence is an integral part the new Bill, as a means both of demon- rating to the satisfaction of the court that marriage has indeed broken down, and of termining the custody of children and de- ding what financial support should be paid Whom.
Again, many unhappy couples at present derstandably shrink from divorce because eY cannot bear the prospect of the most in- ate details of their married life being agged through the courts and made the abject of public interrogation. This, too, 11 not be ended by the new Bill: indeed, Could well make it worse. Finally, it has alleged that the Bill will at last pro. e 'divorce by consent.' This again is not May true. For under the present law, as 15 administered, there is already de facto l'orce by mutual consent. What the Bill does, however—and this is essentially all it does—is introduce 'divorce without consent,' since a five-year separation is included, along with the usual 'matrimonial offences,' as evi- dence of breakdown of a marriage.
Cui Bono? The most persistent and per- suasive advocates of this and similar measures, such as Mr Leo Abse, say that they are chiefly concerned about the .poor little bastards: the children of a second, illicit union. who will have to live the-whole of their lives with the social 'stigma of illegitimacy simply because one of their parents' original partner refuses to grant a divorce. This is an extraordinarily- old- fashioned point of view. Most people nowa days neither know whether Tommy Smith's parents are legally married nor consider it their business to care. A much more .potent source of child hardship today comes from being brought up in a home without a father. And not even the staunchest advocates of the new Bill could argue that easier divorce will actually reduce the number of father- less families.
In fact, the more one looks into it the clearer it becomes that what the divorce law reformers are really after, if they only recog- nised it, is not easier divorce but easier re- marriage : in other words, not a -Divorce Reform Bill but a Legitimisation of Bigamy Bill. At one stroke this would mean not more but fewer divorces; the automatic legitiMisa- tion of large numbers of bastards and the re- moval of their 'stigma': and the possibility of contracting a new marriage without the sordid and usually mutually unsettling busineSs of having the first one dissected and dissolved by the courts.
Of course, although to the Christian con- cept of marriage there is little fundamental difference between bigamy accompanied by a secular legal formula known as 'divorce' and bigamy tout court, current western social convention prefers the former. So would-be advocates of a Bigamy Bill have probably, for the time being, to settle for the secod-best represented-by Mr Jones's so-calledbivorce Reform Bill. Yet as we pointed outin these columns last January, dig measure is mis- named : it is really a Marriage Ref4m Bill, which would alter fundamentally the legal nature of marriage in this country--a fact which a Bigamy Bill, at least, would explicitly recognise.
And there is one wEiy, in partidular, in which Mr Jones's secatiWbest is rriiiiiitestly not good enough. This is over the.. clauses (Four and Six) relating to financial provision for the divorced wife, where it is the man who has decided to marry again. These are plainly inadequate. The requirement That 'the court must 'obtain a satisfaCtory undertaking from the petitioner that he will make such financial provision for the fespondent as the court may approve' is not worththe gaper it is written on. Even today the majOrIty of maintenance orders are not being ntet! Few men can support two wives: still feiver two families; and in law a man's first obligation is 'to his present, legal wife.. 'Nor is lit enough to dismiss the question of inaneial provision for the former wife as being -a mat- ter for a reform of the' National IrtsutaliCe Acts, or for increased pLblic 'charity, and of no concern of the divorce law sefornS,Ors.: In- deed, had the 'reformert: ik fact beleV'Pro- posing a Bigamy Bill, ihey, would at Yeast have put the two wives in an equalfooting. instead of (as they have cloile),:leaving4Tie first wife in an inferior and highly vulnerahle posi- tion. • • • attention on strengthening the two financial clauses, Four and Six, and in particular on strengthening Clause Four (absit omen), which gives the court the power to refuse a divorce if `grave financial or other hardship would result to the respondent.' This clause inevitably implies one divorce law for the rich and another for the poor, which is not (in practical terms) unreasonable; it also implies an uncomfortably arbitrary power of the courts to decide whether or not a divorce should be granted. But while a measure of divorce law reform is plainly desirable, it is far from clear that the present Bill is the right answer, and certain that the financial clauses within it are gravely inadequate. They must now be strengthened in Committee, as best they can, before the Bill becomes law.
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