Make divorce easier and more dignified, lawyers ask High Court
Court rules that there was no evidence of improvements done on the property during the couple's marriage.
What you need to know:
- Petition seeks to allow for couples to terminate their marriages through a written consent filed in court.
- Existing law on terminating marriages, the lawyers argue, is embarrassing to the couples, their children and society.
A suit that seeks to have marriages dissolved in a more dignified manner has been lodged in the High Court by a consortium of lawyers and consultants.
The court is now being urged to call for the amendment of the Marriage Act 2014 to allow partners to divorce without going through tedious, acrimonious and embarrassing litigations. The petitioners also say the current law applied in dissolving marriages is embarrassing to the couples, their children and the society.
In addition, easier divorces will save lives, argue the lawyers, who say that divorce litigations expose the lives of the participants, thus damaging their reputations, and matters of importance such as co-parenting and distribution of property become a matter of life and death.
Copler Attorneys and Consultancy wants the court to compel the Attorney-General and the National Assembly to amend the 2014 Marriage Act to allow couples to terminate their marriages through a written consent filed in court.
"[The petitioner] prays for a declaration order be issued that disagreeing parties to a marriage are at liberty to terminate their marriage through consent and upon filing the consent in court, a decree shall issue to the Registrar of Marriages cancelling the union and deeming the marriage dissolved," the firm says.
Existing law on terminating marriages, the lawyers argue, is embarrassing to the couples, their children and society.
They say divorce proceedings have life-long stigma for the parties and their families.
The Marriage Act, they argue, violates articles 10, 36, 45 and 259 of the Constitution that require every citizen to have dignity and respect.
They want the court to declare those sections of the Marriage Act unconstitutional and illegal as they damage the reputation of divorcing couples and their children forever.
They want a mandatory injunction to be issued to the National Assembly to amend the Marriage Act.
"Sadly, most marriages have turned (into) abusive empty shells, where parties are in it just because they are apprehensive of their private contentions being aired in public or the expense, or both," the petitioners state.
They also argue that couples should be able to end a marriage as easily as they enter it.
They say the children of a divorcing couple bear the embarrassment, public humiliation and ridicule when their parents tussle in court.
To avoid court processes, the petitioners say, some aggrieved parties resort to killing of their spouses as an easy way out of bitter unions.
They do so “in order to not share (their) matrimonial wealth or pay alimony".
