Law change would make divorces less expensive

Along with making divorce less painful, senior politicians aim to make it less costly as well.

One of the 18 proposals put forward to overhaul the island’s divorce law is to introduce no-fault by application, or ‘DIY divorce’.

Under this suggestion the court would receive an application for a divorce order, rather than a petition from an advocate.

The grounds for divorce would be that the marriage had irretrievably broken down, and there would be no requirement to prove any facts.

One or both spouses would have to provide a statement of irretrievable breakdown, and this would be regarded as sufficient evidence by the court.

Evidence checks would be made on whether the notice is true and valid, and the parties’ identities would also need to be verified.

This proposal supports those who wish to process the divorce themselves, thus avoiding hefty fees from lawyers.

The price of a divorce in Guernsey varies, but it is usually in the thousands of pounds, meaning financial as well as emotional pain. The idea is that DIY divorce would probably only be for simple cases, where couples agree on the reasons for the split, how they will look after the children and how they will divide the money, property and possessions.

In no-fault scenarios, where there are no children and no assets or pensions, a divorce application should be relatively easy for a layperson to fill out, without the need for a lawyer. This process would also free up a lot of court time because the court would no longer have to be satisfied on the factual grounds for divorce, allowing resources to be diverted to more complex cases.

The proposals from Policy & Resources back away from full digitalisation, the idea is that the legal changes should be progressed first before introducing a digitalised process.

In the details of the policy letter, there are safeguards to make sure that divorce is not immediately available on demand.

For instance, P&R suggests retaining the ‘cooling off period’ of at least 60 days from application to provisional order.

It also wants to retain the two-stage decree process of provisional order and then final order. Raising awareness of support services, such as private counsellors, reconciliation and mediation workers, is another recommendation.

There is currently no set time period in which couples can divorce after a wedding, meaning that local couples can file for divorce the day after getting married.

The review found no reason why that should change.