 |
|
Legal Consequences of Marriage
Exercise 1.Read the text and find the answer the following questions:
1. What are duties and rights in marriage?
2. How must spouses support each other?
3. What does living together imply?
4. When does the duty to cohabit cease?
5. Define the terms: irretrievable breakdown of marriage; annulment; divorce; separation.
A married couple have a legal duty to maintain one another. Although there are no fixed rules about how the partners should actually give one another, there is a general rule that each will look after the other financially. If one partner does not maintain the other, then an application for maintenance can be made to a magistrates' court, whether the parties are separated or still living together.
The couple both have a duty to maintain their children. Married couples have a right to live together which includes a right to occupy a matrimonial home regardless of which spouse owns it or is renting it. However, a marriage will still exist even if both partners agree to live apart for long periods of time, but after two years' separation, divorce is possible. The law will not force partners to live together, nor does it allow one partner to force the other to live with him or her, for example by locking the person up in the matrimonial home. Living together implies agreeing to have sexual intercourse. If sexual intercourse is unreasonably refused by one partner, this could amount to unreasonable behaviour and grounds for divorce. As the wife, by marriage, consents to sexual intercourse, it used to be the case that a husband could not be prosecuted for raping his wife.
This duty to cohabit ceases:
a) Where because of violent behaviour by one partner, a court has made an exclusion or protection order or has granted an injunction to keep the violent partner away, or if the behaviour of party justifies the other in withdrawing from cohabitation.
b) Where divorce proceedings have been started and the decree has been granted (the first stage in divorce) or the wife has been granted an injunction to stop the husband molesting her.
c) The parties have signed a separation agreement. There are several different kinds of separation.
d) Agreement.A couple may simply decide to live apart and come to an informal agreement about money matters and custody of children. However this is often merely a prelude to divorce. Alternatively, the couple may have a formal separation drawn up in a deed which specifies the terms of the separation, with details about maintainance and custody set out clearly. There may be tax advantages in this type of separation over an informal agreement.
e) Court orders.Magistrates' court and county court orders: where there is threat of physical violence to a wife and children, the magistrates' court and county court have power to grant an injunction to keep a violent spouse out of the house. A maintenance order can be made at the same time.
f) A judicial separation order ends the parties' duty to live together. It is obtainable on the same grounds as divorce.
g) Divorce.Either party can petition for divorce after one year of marriage, provided it can be shown that the marriage has broken down irretrievably and that one of the parties is domiciled or habitually resident in this country. This was first laid down by the Divorce Law Reform Act 1969.
Annulment ends a marriage. It is granted in circumstances when a marriage was invalid from the beginning or is somehow defective. The following marriages are invalid (void): Where one or both parties:
– were under 16;
– were related within the prohibited degrees (closely related);
– were already married;
– had made a polygamous marriage while domiciled in England or Wales;
– where there is a defect in the formality of the marriage;
– where the parties are of the same sex.
Text 2