To have and to hold – and then bin?

A few days on from 6 April 2022, I was browsing on Facebook – and always being curious about people – clicked on the name of someone who had recently married. I didn’t know the couple and the wedding picture was, naturally, a beautiful image from a memorable day.

The bride captioned it with: ‘I promise to love you ’til I take my last breath and beyond’. But I have to confess that the cynic in me thought – how long will it last?

I’m specific as to the date – 6 April – because that’s the date on which the divorce laws in England and Wales dramatically changed. Or, to put it another way, it’s the date on which the God-ordained institution of marriage was significantly undermined once again.

The new framework represents the biggest overhaul of divorce laws since 1969. It will now be easier to get a divorce than to buy a house or to win compensation for personal injury.

So what has changed? Essentially, if you want a divorce you no longer have to blame your spouse.

And if your spouse does not want to get a divorce? Well, it’s basically ‘tough’, because it is no longer possible to contest a divorce application (previously, you had to be separated for five years if the other objected – or go down the litigation route).

While the commonly held view among evangelicals is that adultery is the sole Biblical ground for divorce, it had been permissible to rely on adultery, unreasonable behaviour or desertion to prove the marriage had irretrievably broken down.

The new divorce application simply requires the spouse seeking a divorce to provide a legal statement that the marriage has irretrievably broken down. That statement will be accepted as conclusive.

However, the reforms do not go quite as far as allowing a ‘quickie’ divorce – but it’s not far off. The parties have a 20-week period before a conditional order of divorce (which replaces the decree nisi) can be granted. The idea is that this gives the couple the chance to reflect, salvage the relationship and reconcile if that’s possible – but critics say it is not long enough.

If anyone still claims that the UK is a Christian country, these divorce reforms ought to cast doubt on such a view. (Incidentally, on a brief examination of a 2019 parliamentary research paper on the proposed no-fault divorce, there was no mention of God, Scripture, church or Christians.)

That’s not to say these reforms will not have distinct benefits – that would be disingenuous. The concerns of family lawyers, who have campaigned for years with the best of motives to end the divorce ‘blame-game’, centred around conflict and animosity as many parties contested a divorce, fought over the children and finances, and ended up in court.

This was thought to have been exacerbated because of the inherent legal necessity to apportion blame.

The intention behind the reforms is laudable – removing blame and allowing couples to divorce amicably with minimal conflict and with much less of a chance of ending up in the family courts. The parties can put their emotional energies into agreeing financial and children matters instead of dealing with issues around culpability for the marriage failing.

However, there appears to be no room for the traditional purpose and sanctity of marriage as ordained by God.

Satan tempted Eve, the first wife, with ‘Did God really say… ?’ – and he’s never stopped undermining what God has said. Did God really say that marriage is between a man and woman? Did Jesus really say that divorce is not permitted except for adultery?

A specialist family lawyer who I have worked with describes the new reforms as ‘evolution’ and progress – ‘fine-tuning of our society’ to be embraced. He does not believe the reforms will see an increase in divorce applications. Simon Calvert from the Christian Institute believes it will.

What we are seeing is a yet another state-sanctioned move away from our nation’s Christian foundations.