Source: https://dbfamilylaw.wordpress.com/category/divorce/
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 20:00:29+00:00

Document:
Mrs Owens has been given permission to appeal to the Supreme Court. She is challenging the decision of a circuit judge and the Court of Appeal (Owens v Owens  EWCA Civ 182,  4 WLR 74) to find that, though her marriage had unquestionably broken down, she failed to prove that her husband had behaved in a way which showed that she could not reasonably be expected to live with him.
The relevant law is set out at Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 s 1. There is one ground for divorce: either party to a marriage can petition for divorce (A) ‘on the ground that the marriage has broken down irretrievably’; but a court can only say there is irretrievable breakdown if one of five ‘facts’ are proved including (s 1(2)(b)): ‘that the respondent [(B)] has behaved in such a way that [A] cannot reasonably be expected to live with [(B)]’.
Though they considered that Mrs Owens’s (ie A’s in her case) marriage had broken down irretrievably, the Court of Appeal felt unable to say that she could not be expected to live with Mr Owens (see eg comment at ‘Owens: a dead marriage but no divorce’  New Law Journal 31 March, David Burrows; and here). The logic of the court’s conclusion, based only on the words of s 1, is difficult to follow. But what of its logic, in terms of Mrs Owens’s personal – or ‘human’ – rights (under European Convention 1950 and generally)?
In Owens Sir James Munby P commented on Mrs Owens’s advocate’s assertion that European Convention 1950 Arts 8 and 12 supported her case. He said, of Mr Owens’s reply to this assertion, with which he agreed, that there is ‘no Convention right to be divorced nor, if domestic law permits divorce, is there any Convention right to a favourable outcome in such proceedings’.
If this was the advocates’ argument it was, indeed, an odd line for him to take. Section 1(2)(b) does not require anyone to prove ‘fault’. It asks an open question: has a spouse behaved in such a way that the other spouse cannot live with her or him? That need not be because they are at fault. It requires proof only that B has acted in a way that A ‘cannot reasonably be expected to live with’ B. A must be able to say that her marriage is dead (as in the Owens case, and as the court found). Each party surely should then be able to move on?
If European Convention 1950 is necessary to all this, Art 8 seems to me to be relevant. I cannot see that Art 12 has any relevance. It is difficult to see how respect for a person’s ‘private life’ (‘private and family’ are disjunctive: they mean two different things. They are not both part of the same concept) is consistent with requiring either party to a dead marriage to going on living with the other spouse (as the court knew was likely to be the effect of their decision for Mrs Owens).
Looked at as a question of right separate from European Convention 1950, it is necessary to find a duty to which the right is corollary (or reflective). Do I have a duty to live with someone I no longer want to share a home with? If there is no marriage the answer is resoundingly: no. If I am married to that person, why is my duty any different? If it is different, does not the right not to be discriminated against (Art 14) apply (marriage is an ‘other status’ as referred to in Art 14).
In law spouses must make arrangements for financial support for one another (or the court can order it: Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 Pt 2). That is a statutory duty bred of a right to financial support from the weaker spouse (the same does not apply if we are not married). That right would be protected – enhanced even – if Mrs Owens’s marriage is dissolved.
But to find – as did the Court of Appeal – a right vested in Mr Owens to expect of Mrs Owens a form of conjugal cohabitation (and thus no right in Mrs Owens to claim financial support till her marriage is dissolved) is not in any statute. Is such a right implied by English law? That it is, is the logic of the Court of Appeal’s decision.
Does the requirement to live in an unwanted and loveless relationship interfere with a person’s ‘family life [and] home’? Common sense – and, it must be hoped, the law – must surely say ‘yes’? If MCA 1973 s 1(2)(b) says what the Court of Appeal says it says – and I do not think it does require them to find as they did in Owens – then Mrs Owens needs also to seek a declaration of incompatibility with her rights (in Arts 8 and 14) under Human Rights Act 1998 s 4.
The fate of the unfortunate Mrs Owens and her refused divorce set me thinking about the need to review our divorce laws, especially if Mrs Owens’s case represents how senior judges say our divorce laws should work. I had thought that since the 1970s most people, if they want a divorce, could get one. Not so Mrs Owens (Owens v Owens  EWCA Civ 182), whose unreasonable behaviour petition was dismissed on the assessment of a circuit judge and of the Court of Appeal (Sir James Munby P, Hallett and Macur LJJ) namely four elderly, white, middle class individuals, two of each gender.
In the final analysis the issue involves an application of law to facts, and then imposing a subjective judicial view of what is can ‘reasonably’ be put up with in a marriage. But first what could fairly be the law on what should bring a marriage to an end?
The ability would be there (unlike now) to apply to the court for financial provision at any time (now you have to wait till you can file a divorce petition before applying to unravel or to reconfigure your family finances).
The last time law reform was attempted – Family Law Act 1996 Pt 2 – it was highly complex, involved the then fashionable ‘information meeting’ (Prince Charles was getting divorced at the time: would he have to attend such a meeting?); and it was never brought into operation (ditched finally by Children and Families Act 2014). So the law remains as in 1969 with divorce allowed on one ground – irretrievable breakdown – to be established on one or more of five facts: adultery, unreasonable behaviour, desertion for two years, and living apart for two (with consent) or five years.
Irretrievable breakdown and no divorce?
And what of Mrs Owens? She is locked in a dead marriage and blocked from divorce – it might be thought – by a narrow view of the present view legal issue. ‘On any view, the marriage is over’ said Hallett LJ (§102); and the other Court of Appeal judges agreed. Mrs Owens’s marriage has irretrievably broken down (Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 s 1(1)). But she cannot be divorced. Can this be what Parliament intended when the Divorce Reform Act 1969 (now consolidated into MCA 1973) found its way onto the statute book?
We are entitled to ask; for can Parliament really have intended that irretrievable breakdown might not lead to divorce? Could those 1969 MPs have thought that a marriage which was dead could not – by one of the facts under s 1(2) – be dissolved. I doubt it. But Parliamentary intent was not amongst questions the Court of Appeal judges seemed to ask in their 100+ judgment. Yet they were entitled to do so. Indeed it is arguable that they had the duty so to do. The court is permitted to look not just at the words of a statute but at the Parliamentary intent behind the when an Act was passed (Padfield v Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food  AC 997,  2 WLR 924).
‘(1) …a petition for divorce may be presented to the court by either party to a marriage on the ground that the marriage has broken down irretrievably.
The effect of this is that if one spouse (A) wants a divorce immediately they must have a spouse who is willing to admit adultery (s 1(2)(a)); or to allege successfully – as Mrs Owens failed, in law, to do – that their spouse (B) has ‘behaved in such a way…’ etc. What is to be ‘reasonably… expected’ is entirely subjective. It depends on what an individual judge thinks on the day is to be ‘reasonably… expected’; or, put another way: how much must A put up with? And what might those MPs in 1969 have expected A – or, for that matter, Mrs Owens – to put up with.
Then turn the question around. Ask deductively, as the judges did not do: if a court finds a marriage to be dead, does that not prove that at some level someone – eg B – must have behaved in a way that A ‘cannot reasonably be expected to live with’ B. Munby P scratched at this point in §37 when he set out a test for unreasonable behaviour: ‘what is proved to have happened in this marriage’ and ‘having regard to the cumulative effect’ of B’s conduct has B behaved in such a way that A cannot reasonably be expected to live with B?
But Sir James did not look at the other end of the telescope. If a marriage has broken down, is it not reasonable to say that someone must have behaved in a way that the other cannot be expected to live together: a process of deductive reasoning. MCA 1973 is an ‘always speaking’ statute which must be seen in the light of how a reasonable person would see its words in 2017 (§§39 and 41), said Sir James. But no, the judges seem to think, the law calls for feats of Victorian stiff-upper lip fortitude from parties to a marriage, where one wants a marriage not to be dissolved.
But we are allowed to ask: even in 1969 would the MPs who passed the original divorce reform Act have expected Mrs Owens to remain married to, and living with, her estranged husband. I doubt it.

References: EWCA 
 Art 8
 Art 12
 Art 14
 EWCA 
 §37