Supreme Court Justice Lord Wilson has criticised some of the provisions of a Bill on divorce currently before the House of Lords.
In a lecture to Bristol law students this week on Changes over the centuries on the financial consequences of divorce, Lord Wilson referred to the Divorce (Financial Provision) Bill, which would prohibit any transfer of non-matrimonial property to the other spouse otherwise than by agreement. Some of the “rigid” provisions in their Bill, he said, would have had “grotesque consequences” if applied to a number of cases with he had been involved during his career. Lord Wilson practised as a family law barrister for 25 years before becoming a Family Division judge.
While the Bill’s supporters were “distinguished, well-meaning peers”, he said, “the trouble is that these would-be reformers lack experience of practice in the present system".
“I suspect that they believe too readily what they read in the papers and that they regard the exceptional cases as the norm. This leads them to exaggerate the difficulties of our current system and to ignore the virtue of principles which have a sufficient degree of elasticity to enable a reasonable result to be fitted to each case.”
The Bill had its second reading in the House of Lords in January.
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