Three cheers for Mr Justice Coleridge.
It is high time to entitle each divorcing spouse to one per cent of the other's estate for each year of marriage, up to fifty per cent, and to disentitle the petitioning spouse unless fault be proved.
It is high time to entitle any marrying couple to register their marriage as bound by the law prior to 1969 as regards grounds and procedures for divorce, and to enable any religious organisation to specify that any marriage which it conducts shall be so bound, requiring it to counsel couples accordingly.
And it is high time to legislate that the Church of England be such a body unless the General Synod specifically resolve the contrary by a two-thirds majority in all three Houses, and to do something similar for the Methodist and United Reformed Churches, which also exist pursuant to Acts of Parliament; I will have to check the exact legislation relating to the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy, but if something similar can be done, then it must be done.
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you write: "I will have to check the exact legislation relating to the restoration of the Catholic hierarchy, but if something similar can be done, then it must be done."
ReplyDeleteThis is, off the top of my head, at least the third time you have written substantially the same post on this topic. Have you not, in all that time, checked the exact legislation? if not, why not?
Point taken.
ReplyDeleteOf course, if I had the House of Commons library to play with...
You might be thinking of something similar to so-called covenant marriage, which has been instituted in Louisiana, Arkansas, and Arizona for those couples who want it.
ReplyDeleteCovenant marriage hasn't altered divorce rates at all, because despite strong political support, it turns out that in reality virtually no one chooses to marry under limited-divorce terms when marriage under no-fault-divorce terms is available.
I can't see many girls over here agreeing to a less secure marriage than they could otherwise have. Serial monogamy is a much longer-established part of the culture in the US.
ReplyDeleteI don't see why British girls would be much different from us.
ReplyDeleteThe expectation that you will go out and earn a paycheck instead of staying home dramatically alters what you're willing to put up with in a man. The more "secure" marriage may in fact seem riskier to someone who could otherwise walk away from her unhappy situation and have the skills to take care of herself just fine. I'm pretty sure that consideration must occur to British women, too.
Solid marriages are a much-needed social norm, because the well-being of children and their successful socialization depend on this. But larger social and economic forces just seem to undermine marriage and family inexorably, working in part through all those big and little choices we make in our own lives just to get ahead and be happy.
What you say is true, but so is the fact that divorce has been far more common and acceptable in America for much longer than in Britain.
ReplyDeleteSee, for example, the provisions that I want to make in respect of the (Established) Church of England, and the Methodist and United Reformed bodies also created by Acts of Parliament in order to avoid endless litigation when they were set up.
Now try and imagine anyone even suggesting such a thing in relation to the Episcopal Church, or the UMC, or either the PCUSA or the UCC.
Here, such a plan might not be constitutional. And those churches you mention -- the UCC and the Episcopalians, et al -- would never agree to it, anyway.
ReplyDeleteAs far as your plan for marriage in UK churches is concerned, aren't you afraid that most people will respond by voting with their feet and cutting these institutions out of their weddings entirely?
"those churches you mention -- the UCC and the Episcopalians, et al -- would never agree to it, anyway"
ReplyDeleteExactly.
"aren't you afraid that most people will respond by voting with their feet and cutting these institutions out of their weddings entirely?"
No. If anything, it would make more women, in particular, insist on church weddings.