Adultery or unreasonable behaviour - does it make a difference?

[SaraConnor]

If someone claims adultery as the grounds for divorce, how does it affect the other party if it is accepted? Is it better to challenge and go for unreasonable behaviour? Will it affect finances or child access at all?

Adultery udsed to be such a shameful thing but no-one seems to care one way or the other any more. making a list of 'unreasonable behaviours' can cause lots of upset and cause more difficulties than there already were.

Either way there is no difference to child access or child maintenance. establishing 'who is at fault' can sometimes make a difference to spousal maintenance but where there are children to be supported this overrides the spousal element.

Just do whatever is least painful and least hassle for your circumstances. Pain avoided early in the process means you are more likely to maintain a more civil relationship for the sake of your children.

Thanks, it's my partner's divorce, he hasn't had any legal advice yet and doesn't know whether to just reply to the letter and accept the grounds.

What is spousal maintenance?

Makes absolutely no difference at all to ancillary relief (finances) or children's issues. The courts are not interested in who did what to who and how many times.

Technically it is adultery if you're with him in the Biblical sense , so he may as well admit to that, but he should check first whether his wife's making a claim for costs and oppose that if appropriate.

spousal maintenance is maintenance to his spouse (wife). It is different to child maintenance that is always payable. Spousal maintenance is not always payable, only in certain circumstances, such as the wife has given up her career to stay at home with young children and needs a period of time, say 2 or 3 years to enable her to re-train/get back to work and would therefore have a short period of monthly maintenance to enable her to do so.

to MOS

One thing to think about, which may or may not be an issue for you, is that most churches will not marry a divorcee if adultery was the reason for the divorce and the person they wish to marry was the other party to that adultery.

If that was the reason then surely you shouldn't lie about it so you can get married in Church Panda!!??

to be honest, I thought a lot of churches won't allow you to re-marry in their church if divorced? I think the only real exception for most is annulment

That's not what I meant RedHelen. I knew a couple where the bloke was divorced on grounds of adultery with her. In fact, they'd met after he'd seperated from his wife, but he didn't get divorced from her straight away. Adultery was given as the reason when they came to divorce because by then he was living with his new partner. At the time he never thought to question it, just went along with it to get the divorce through with as little agro as possible. Except later, when him and his new partner went to get married, none of the local churches would agree to it.

MOSagain, Catholic churches won't allow a divorcee to re-marry, it has to be annulled. The CofE does except for adultery and marrying the other guilty party. I was re-married in a baptist church, which had the same position as the CofE, but I think it's much more dependent on the individual minister.

I really think it depends on the vicar/minister. I had a friend who wanted to get married in C of E church but they would not allow it as her fiance was divorced (on HIS wife's adultery)

I got married in a registry office with no church wedding. In Germany church weddings are a blessing, the only legal marriage is the registry office wedding. You have a church wedding afterwards if you want that. We didn't.

CofE has discretion in remarrying divorcees. If the divorced fiancé/e is the "innocent" party when there has been adultery, then the chances of discretion being granted is high. Also, there are time limits on using adultery as grounds. If there is a failed reconciliation which takes you over that time limit, I believe it can still be part of an 'unreasonable behaviour' petition. (Am I right in thinking that?)

Panda I didn't know that was the CofE official policy.

I seem to remember some bloke called Charles, or something like that, who married his former mistress, and the affair started when she was married to someone else and continued while he was engaged and married to a much younger woman.....

.....or have I got all that wrong?

As long ago as the early 1970s some vicars in the CofE were conducting blessings on civil marriages where one of the parties had been divorced. The head chorister at church married someone who was divorced and had a blessing with full choir, organ etc etc - back in about 1973 ish. There were others, too.

Nope, I seem to remember that bloke too. Although we all know the real reasons, they didn't get actually divorced on grounds of adultery. I think it was because they had been separated for 2 years.

But it isn't relevant anyway as he didn't marry his mistress in the CofE. He married her in a civil ceremony in Windsor Guild Hall.