APPENDIX 15
Letter to the Clerk of the Committee from
Dr Richard Ryder MA PhD DCP AFBPsS FZS FRSA, Director of Family
Justice (PS 3)
1. The divorce laws are currently acting as
an incentive for divorce. Work shy and irresponsible partners
of both sexes gain huge financial rewards through divorce and
now do so with increasing frequency. To add pension-sharing to
the burden to be carried by provident spouses will increase that
incentive and the injustice of the situation.
2. The whole of divorce law should be concerned
only about the welfare of the children of a marriage. Adults
are altogether different. The state should not be concerned about
assisting unscrupulous adults to deprive innocent spouses of their
assets—as increasingly happens today.
3. It may only be in a minority of divorces
where such gross injustice occurs. A number of cases are known,
however, where hard working wives, as well as husbands, have been
forced to sell their homes and surrender their hard earned savings
in order to meet the demands of idle spouses who have deserted
them for another partner. If the deserting spouse is not working
he/she receives even more!
4. For the state to endorse such "day light
robbery" of the innocent spouse is a monstrous injustice
and an affront to human rights.
5. Much of the injustice appears to stem from
an outdated and somewhat stereotyped view of marriage. The law
seems to be based upon the (often sexist) notion that one spouse
goes out to work while the other works hard at home looking after
children and observing all the domestic duties. This is a caricature.
6. Far more often the modern marriage involves
both partners sharing the household chores and childcare
and both partners enjoying similar opportunities for earning.
Under such circumstances it is surely quite unjust for a deserting
spouse to rob the other of his/her savings.
7. The state should concentrate upon the welfare
of children. Where there are none, it is no business of the
state to interfere, nanny-like, in providing unearned windfalls
for improvident adults merely because they want to change partners.
To erode the pensions of thrifty spouses adds insult to the injury
of separation and divorce.
8. Divorce is becoming a money-making scam,
not only for lawyers but for an increasing number of married people.
Current divorce law is encouraging an acquisitive attitude which
is now destroying families in this country. This is contrary
to government policy which is to promote family stability.
15 February 1999
| 
