Are people really forced to lie to the Court to get their divorce through?

An interesting article alleging that people are forced to lie to the Courts in order to obtain their divorce. I wrote a few weeks ago about no fault divorce, explaining that currently, if a married couple want to get divorced within two years of separation, one of them has to accuse the other of unreasonable behaviour or adultery. I am 100% in favour of changing this, and introducing no fault divorce. In my opinion it is awful that, at the beginning of what can be a very stressful, precarious, and potentially acrimonious situation, where couples have to agree how to divide their finances, and how the care of their children should be shared, one of them has to start by saying the other is unreasonable.

I do not however agree that many people have to make up unreasonable behaviour. The sorts of things that can be included a divorce petition are, ‘my wife never tidies up after herself.’ ‘my husband isn’t communicative enough’, ‘my wife spends too much time on the internet’, ‘my husband never compliments me’, ‘my wife doesn’t like to socialise with my family’, ‘my wife doesn’t seem to want to resolve the difficulties in our marriage’. In my opinion things like this are fairly common when a marriage breaks down, and in my experience it is rarely necessary to lie.

It is certainly never ever necessary to make up allegations of alcoholism, drug use and domestic abuse, the examples included in this article, to get a divorce petition through the Courts. And this should never be recommended.

Some 118,000 divorces are granted in England and Wales each year.

Around half (57 per cent) of divorces are based on people accusing each other of some form of unreasonable behaviour.

Reasons cited can range from domestic abuse to drug addiction, alcoholism and gambling problems.

But more than 27 per cent of couples citing unreasonable behaviour admitted their claims were not true, but were the easiest way of getting a divorce, according to new research by Resolution which represents almost 5,000 family solicitors.