The outdated divorce law in England and Wales is making conflicts among spouses more irreconcilable. A study points that spouses are being "pushed" to file inaccurate details of divorce just to meet the strict requirements. The divorce legislation is already more than 50 years old and deemed outdated by many standards.
According to a research conducted by the University of Exeter Law School, there is a need to pattern England's divorce law to that of the modern system. To support the claim, they also gathered 3,000 respondents from England and Wales. According to Phys.org, a third of them are divorced adults. Further, 400 cases that range from routine divorce and contested divorce were part of the study.
The research yields that half of the claims were based on their spouse's behaviors. Most of these accusations were blown out of proportion and spouses are forced to lie just to convince England and Wales to grant them a divorce. In some cases, petty conflicts have "hopes" for mediation but cause bigger conflicts themselves because spouses are lying about the gravity of offenses.
There are five grounds in England and Wales for a successful divorce proceeding: separation with consent for two years, separation for five years, desertion, adultery, and behavior. Among these grounds, the most frequent claims are against their spouses' behavior. However, those who are seeking for divorce were forced to stretch the truth just to gain favorable ruling. The University of Exeter stressed that instead of the spouses moving on with their life without holding any grudge against each other, the divorce law is simply pushing the parties to blame each other.
Given that most divorce cases in England and Wales are taken in its surface value unless, in a contested divorce, the last thread for "civil" relationship thereafter was severed. The primary impact of the divorce law is the repercussion to children. While it is mandated that parents should look after their children after divorce, it is getting harder to achieve when one party made absurd and untruthful accusations against the other.