Dissolution and Separation?

The Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Bill is making its way through Parliament. The House of Commons, which has a huge Conservative overall majority, has given it a Second Reading by 231 votes to 16. "No-fault divorce" seems to have been coming round every four or five years since the early 1990s. Didn't they do it a generation ago?

But the introduction of civil partnerships for opposite-sex couples means that divorce can now be made far more difficult, at least for people who had chosen marriage after this new arrangement had come into force. After all, if they had not wanted that, then they could always have had a civil partnership instead. 

So we need to amend this Bill to give any marrying couple the right to register their marriage as bound by the divorce law that obtained prior to 1969, and any religious organisation the right to specify that any marriage that it conducted would be so bound, requiring it to counsel couples accordingly. 

We need to fix entitlement upon divorce by Statute at one per cent of the other party’s estate for each year of marriage up to 50 per cent, with no entitlement for the petitioning party unless the other party’s fault were proved. And we need to remove the restriction of civil partnerships to unrelated couples, since there has never been any sexual aspect to civil partnerships per se.