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Feminism: Sex and gender discussions

Woman Refused Divorce Because Her Husband Thought They Still Had a Good Few Years Left?!

31 replies

HairsprayBabe · 15/02/2017 12:56

Has anyone else seen this? It is bloody ridiculous!

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-38978661

I can't help but think if it was the other way round then it would 100% have been granted.

That poor woman Sad

OP posts:
M0stlyBowlingHedgehog · 15/02/2017 14:15

It's bloody bonkers (came across it in the Telegraph earlier) - I presume it is an instance of a judge being totally batty and stuck somewhere in the 18th century, and hope it will be thrown out at appeal. If it isn't thrown out at appeal, then the law clearly needs changing.

VestalVirgin · 15/02/2017 13:25

Okay, googled it, apparently, this is normal in most European countries - that is, inability to divorce if one was not able to move out. Which of course disproportionately disadvantages women.

Germany grants a right to divorce if a couple lived separately in a shared flat, whatever that means. (Separate rooms?)

I cannot believe I never realized that this is a very sneaky way to get "only husbands can divorce" in through the back door.

Common sense would say that if a person says they want to get a divorce, then this should be enough reason to give them a divorce. What good reason is there to require separation? It is not like it is a final decision, people can, and have, remarried after a divorce.

VestalVirgin · 15/02/2017 13:11

What the fucking fuck? I thought the UK was, like, civilised? How the fuck is it possible that a woman cannot fucking legally get a divorce in this country?

HairsprayBabe · 15/02/2017 13:02

It sounds like he may have been EAing her from some of the content of the article.

I am horrified tbh.

For people who don't want to click:

A woman who says she is "desperately unhappy" in her 39-year marriage is fighting a legal battle against a court's refusal to grant her divorce.
Tini Owens, 66, has asked the Court of Appeal to overturn a family court ruling, which said she couldn't divorce her husband Hugh Owens, 78.
The court heard her case was that the marriage had broken down, but Mr Owens disagreed and said the couple still had a "few years" to enjoy.

Mrs Owens had made 27 allegations about the way Mr Owens treated her, including that he was "insensitive" in his "manner and tone" and said she was "constantly mistrusted" and felt unloved.
"The simple fact is that I have been desperately unhappy in our marriage for many years," she said in a witness statement.
"There is no prospect of reconciliation."

Mr Marshall said judges had to consider the "cumulative effect" of what might be classed as a long list of trivial matters.
"It was my client's complaint that her husband treated her in a childlike way," Mr Marshall told judges.
"And in a way which was effectively that she should agree with his will."
Barrister Nigel Dyer QC, who represented Mr Owens, said appeal judges should not overturn Judge Tolson's ruling.

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VikingVolva · 15/02/2017 13:02

Well, we can only hypothesise about what would happen in other cases.

And it is so rare for a divorce to be successfully defended that it makes headline news (and the version as read sounds as if the judgement might be reviewed).

They are still under the same roof, it seems, which suggests that without division of marital assets there would be no way to house herself if she just upped and left (they are both of pensionable age, so income might all be bound up in one stream too).

EssieTregowan · 15/02/2017 12:58

What? That's shocking!

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