A LEADING family lawyer has welcomed proposals to finally introduce no-fault divorces in Jersey, after more than a decade of campaigning.
The new rules, due to be discussed by the States Assembly on 25 November at the earliest, would allow couples to divorce each other without placing blame on either party.
Under the proposals, couples would be able to apply for a divorce through a simple statement that the marriage has broken down irretrievably, without needing to assign blame, cite wrongdoing, or prove separation before legally ending their relationship.
Introducing this type of divorce, Home Affairs Minister Mary Le Hegarat said, would bring Jersey in line with “modern practices”.
Advocate Barbara Corbett, of Corbett Le Quesne, was behind a 2014 Law Commission paper, which became the basis of the current proposals.
In 2016, she wrote that Jersey’s divorce laws should allow couples whose marriages have broken down to separate “with minimum distress to the parties and any children, so far as possible promoting a good continuing relationship between the parties and their children, with the minimum of cost”.
She argued that divorce was originally handled in Jersey’s religious court, before moving to the Royal Court in 1949.
Divorce, she said, had long been influenced by “religious ideas about the sanctity of marriage” – but with civil marriages and civil partnerships possible now, fewer people think of it as a religious sacrament.
Currently, couples in their first three years of marriage can’t get a divorce – a provision she argued came from a time when they wouldn’t have lived together before marrying. This should also be removed, she argued.
Ecrivain Jamie-Lee Morgan, also from Corbett & Le Quesne, has also been part of the campaign, having travelled to London to campaign in 2016 and having written her dissertation on the topic.
No-fault divorce was also one of the recommendations made in 2023 by the Violence Against Women and Girls Taskforce.
The proposed new law would also allow the court to order that either person from a marriage or civil partnership can remain on an interim basis in their accommodation in an effort to provide “additional protection and stability for those at risk”.
The overall percentage of marriages and civil partnerships which end in divorce has remained consistent at approximately 40% over the past few years.
