Divorce Filings Jump 50 Per Cent in Week After UK Introduces ‘No Fault’ Law

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Kurt Zindulka

The introduction of “no-fault” divorce laws in Britain has resulted in a 50 per cent increase in divorce filings in the first week of its implementation.

Last week, the UK changed divorce laws in order to remove clauses requiring spouses to prove they have been subject to “unreasonable behaviour” such as abandonment or adultery, or that the couple had living separately for between two and five years.

While the law change does not allow for instant divorces, as couples are required to have been wed for at least 20 weeks, it is possible to attain a divorce without stating a reason in just over 6 months of marriage.

The loosening of the restrictions on divorce have resulted in a “flurry” of filings, according to The Telegraph, which reported that the first week of implementation has seen a fifty per cent spike in divorce applications.

Over the past week, Her Majesty’s Courts and Tribunal Service has received over 3,000 divorce filings, compared to the average of 2,072 per week last year.

Last year, there were 107,724 divorce applications filed in England and Wales, with 111,996 being filed in 2020.

Commenting on the massive upswing in filings, the founder of the campaign group Fathers4Justice, Matt O’Connor said in comments provided to Breitbart London: “The rush to divorce seen across the country since the introduction is creating a class of McDads, whose lives and interests are as disposable as a burger wrapper.”

O’Connor said that the introduction of no fault divorce will lead to greater alienation, suffering and suicide among fathers in Britain.

“Our worst fears are being realised with this spike in divorces which will hit men and fathers most due to the sexist, outdated stereotyping of the courts which dictate children live with their mothers in the family home. We believe urgent reform is needed to introduce divorce equality and parental equality for dads.

“No Fault sounds great, but it will also mean no hope, and no chance for countless fathers as they see the families stripped away from them due to archaic beliefs and practices in the system.”

The introduction of no fault divorce in the United States, first enacted in California in 1969 before spreading to other states, has been credited with ushering in a slew of societal problems throughout America.

A 1997 review on the impacts of no fault divorce by then-professor of law at Richmond University in Virgina, Peter Swisher, stated: “The divorce revolution — the steady displacement of a marriage culture by a culture of divorce and unwed parenthood — has failed. It has created terrible hardships for children, incurred unsupportable social costs, and failed to deliver on its promise of greater adult happiness.”

In 2014, Dr Jane Anderson, a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics at the University of California, San Francisco, noted that “divorce has been shown to diminish a child’s future competence in all areas of life, including family relationships, education, emotional well-being, and future earning power.”

Dr Anderson said that with the exception of families beset by marital violence, that “children fare better when parents work at maintaining the marriage.”

“Consequently, society should make every effort to support healthy marriages and to discourage married couples from divorcing,” she wrote.

Even before the introduction of the no fault divorce legislation, British families have been feeling the squeeze for decades, with successive governments enacting policies focused on incentivising women to join the workforce, including taxing individual earnings as opposed to family units as a whole, meaning that families with two earners would be taxed less than those dependent on one equivalent income.

In contrast to Britain, socially conservative European countries like Poland and Hungary have enacted pro-family policies, such as tax incentives for mothers, which have seen their marriage rates increase, while the UK’s has continued to fall.

Follow Kurt Zindulka on Twitter here @KurtZindulka

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