Let’s end the blame game with no-fault divorce – and protect children involved

Divorce can be followed by joint Christmases, merged families and friendly exes – or it can result in an estranged parent, ongoing custody battles, simmering tensions and lifelong trauma

Many of us will encounter divorce, either as one half of a couple or the child of splitting parents (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

There’s a scene in the 2019 film Marriage Story, Noah Baumbach’s brutally honest depiction of divorce, where one lawyer quotes: “Criminal lawyers see bad people at their best and divorce lawyers see good people at their worst.”

For anyone who’s been through a divorce or felt the fallout, this statement rings painfully true. Divorce has the unpleasant habit of taking two reasonable, rational and generous people, and turning them into bitter, angry, greedy opponents – frequently goaded by money-hungry lawyers.

All too often, a couple enters the divorce process with naively optimistic beliefs that “it will be amicable” and “the kids will be kept out of it” and “we’ll split everything fairly”, but the current system makes this virtually impossible. Today’s arrival of the no-fault divorce in England and Wales can’t eradicate the inevitable trauma families go through when a couple severs ties, but it may be an important step towards taking the sting out of the process.

Relationships break down, couples grow apart, marriages disintegrate; unfortunately many of us will encounter divorce, either as one half of a couple or the child of splitting parents. A total of 103,592 divorces were granted in 2020 (this number would probably be higher if it wasn’t for pandemic-related delays) and there were 107,599 in 2019.

No one sets out with the intention of having a broken marriage (til death do us part tends to be the general aim), but the harsh reality is that when you walk down the aisle, there’s a damn good chance you’ll end up in a divorce lawyer’s office – 33 per cent chance at the current rate.

In the agonisingly fraught, emotionally-charged arena of divorce, forcing couples to apportion blame, or even give a reason for their break-up, helps no one (save the lawyers) and hurts those who are most vulnerable.

We know that divorce is harmful to children (studies indicate that it is more harmful than the death of a parent), yet rather than encouraging couples to play nicely, we force them to draw battle lines. Whether you’re five or 35, seeing your parents break apart is painful, but watching them descend into hatred of one another can be utterly devastating.

Divorce can be followed by joint Christmases, merged families and friendly exes, or it can result in an estranged parent, ongoing custody battles, simmering tensions and lifelong trauma. Most divorced couples can hope for something in between, but under the current laws, we stoke the flames of anger and resentment rather than smoothing the path to resolution.

Until today, for a swift (or as swift as possible) legal separation, a person would have to accuse their partner of desertion, adultery or unreasonable behaviour, and then prove to a judge that this makes their situation “worthy” of a divorce. Granted, the bar is set pretty low (your spouse doesn’t have to do much to be considered acting “unreasonably” in the eyes of the law) but the terminology of blame is in itself damaging.

In most cases, no one is to blame – or perhaps it would be more accurate to say everyone is to blame – but either way, rarely is just one party responsible for the breakdown of a marriage, even in apparently cut-and-dried cases of infidelity, and to claim so ignores the complex nature of relationships.

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In its finest form, marriage is full of love, support and security, but at its worst it can be controlling, limiting, and downright dangerous. Any reason is a good enough reason to leave a marriage, and to suggest otherwise is archaic.

We don’t need to protect the “sanctity of marriage” – we need to protect anyone who is trapped in a union they don’t want to be in, for whatever reason, as well as the children who end up as collateral damage.

Speaking to a lawyer acquaintance about a protracted, ruinously expensive court battle he was working on, I put it to him: But no one wins surely? “Yes they do,” was his smirking response. “I do.” It’s about time that we stop lining lawyers’ pockets and put people first.

Call me a cynic, but I don’t believe anyone can achieve an “amicable” divorce (except maybe Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow), and to walk away unscathed is an unattainable goal. The heartache, sense of loss and financial implications of breaking up a relationship leave wounds that take time to heal. But life goes on after divorce and from the pieces of a broken marriage, families and individuals can rebuild and thrive. Let’s stop playing the blame game and give them the best chance possible.