UK couples thinking about a divorce should be required by law to have a three month “cooling off” period to get more information as to what divorce involves financially and emotionally according to a new family law report.
The suggestion is one of a number of proposals put forward in a wide-ranging review of UK family law conducted by the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ), an influential think tank set up by former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith.
The report, Every Family Matters, is being studied by Tory leader David Cameron. It also proposes more rights for people to keep the assets they owned before they were married if they later got divorced.
The report said such a move would end one of the major deterrents to people getting married today.
It also rejects the current Labour Government proposal to give additional rights to cohabiting couples.
Divorce in England and Wales is currently granted on the basis of the irretrievable breakdown of marriage, on one of five so-called “grounds” – adultery; unreasonable behaviour; desertion; two years’ separation with consent; or five years’ separation without consent.
The new proposals are for a three-month delay before divorce proceedings could begin.
The CSJ is Mr Cameron’s favourite think tank and he has adopted many of its ideas. A previous report calling for tax breaks for married couples two years ago became official Tory policy.
Mr Cameron has repeatedly said he wants an incoming Tory government to restore the status of marriage in the tax system, despite misgivings expressed by senior figures such as Kenneth Clarke.
The latest report includes a YouGov poll which found that 85 per cent of people support the call for married tax breaks while 57 per cent believe the law should promote marriage.
It calls for a major review of family law to be conducted by an independent commission as part of a “concerted effort to stabilise and support relationships within our society.”
A system of state-sponsored relationship counselling is proposed which is based on a scheme in Australia where struggling couples attend Family Relationship Centres.
The proposed British version would be called “family relationship hubs” and couples would be required to attend them by law if they wanted to divorce.
In addition, all couples preparing to marry would be “strongly encouraged” to attend the hubs, although the report stops short of making this compulsory.
It also calls for an overhaul of the law on how assets are divided when couples divorce to better reflect “marital sacrifices”.
Assets would be categorised into “marital assets”, which would be divided equally, and “non-marital assets”, which would stay with the spouse who owned them before.
The court would have the power to make different orders if there was “significant injustice” but otherwise there would be an end to the wide discretion currently allowing judges to carve up wealth.
Recent divorce settlements have heightened concern over the issue, with millions of pounds being awarded to spouses after only a short period of marriage.
Proposals by Labour for cohabiting couples to be given legal rights allowing partners to claim a share of property and income when the relationship breaks down would be reversed in favour of an approach favouring marriage in law.
Ms Harman says cohabiting rights are necessary to safeguard the welfare of children.
But Mr Duncan Smith said: “Instead of giving cohabitees similar legal rights as married couples, which would only undermine marriage, we have to do more to warn people that they can only secure the legal protection of marriage by getting married.
“The cooling off period and the requirement for estranged couples to receive information about the implications of divorce will help to save some worthwhile marriages.”
The report, authored by David Hodson of The International Family Law Group, concludes that whilst there has been a dramatic increase in cohabitation, “this must not obscure the fact that in twenty-first century Britain marriage is still the most common form of partnership for men and women.”
It points out that in 2001 there were more than 11.6 million married couple families in the UK, compared with around 2.2 million cohabiting couple families.
The Office for National Statistics states that the traditional family structure of a married mother and father with a child or children remains the most common family type. More than 8 million, or 64% of dependent children lived with married parents in the UK in 2008.
This compares to 13 per cent living with cohabiting couples and 22 per cent with lone mothers.