Where is the Love? : Divorce

The chap in the next seat in my office is going through a messy divorce at the moment so I’m getting a blow by blow account of his trials and tribulations. The tragedy is that he was a devoted husband and father, never wanted it, never expected it and is now facing financial ruin in the courts. We all pity him but with the British divorce rate exceeding fifty percent its got the rest of us looking over our shoulders a little nervously.

British men have been eyeing nervously the ongoing Charman divorce which has been going through the high court the last few months as it sets a new high for the amount of money granted a British divorced woman.

In the past British law based its decision on what was required for the woman to raise her children and keep her lifestyle in something approximating what she had become accustomed to within the marriage, that is it was judged according to need.

Since 2000 there has been some changes in the divorce laws which now take into account the length of the marriage and the supposed spousal contribution to the family assets…

“ There is a genuine sense of grievance among rich husbands that they married, in this case in 1976, with the law as it then was, and are now facing a sea-change wrought in 2000”
[quoting Mr Justice Wilson]

However there do seem to be some strange judgements on that point…

Her husband, who is now based in Bermuda, had been away much of the time. “When we married I worked for six years [in the Civil Service] and then when we had a family we decided I would give up my career to bring up the children while John continued working. Otherwise neither of us would have been there for the children.” She recalls putting a map on the wall for their children with markers “to show where Daddy was”.

Somehow Britain has suddenly become the best place in the world for a woman to divorce her wealthy husband, so much so they are going to great lengths and expense to come here for the hearing.

What is interesting about this case is that it has allowed Mrs Charman to plunder assets which are actively tied-up in trust for their children, moral issues aside this seems to me to be counter to some of the oldest principles of British law and how it differs from Napoleonic law with regards to the division of assets. Under British law assets traditionally passed to the eldest in deference to both younger siblings and the spouse in order to keep estates intact, particularly as the local community was considerably dependent on the landed estate owners. It was a view towards the common good rather than the individuals, whereas Napoleonic law distributed assets evenly (with a slice for the state).

The big winners in this are naturally the lawyers but the real losers are the next generation of children of both middle-class as well as wealthy couples. Interesting that this change in Law should happen under the stewardship of a lawyer prime minister and his barrister wife is it not?