Chapter 6 Questions

1.  What is the rationale for needs-based responsibility on divorce? How, if at all, is it relevant whether the parties were once spouses or civil partners? What impact should any new relationship of the would-be recipient have, whether marriage/civil partnership or cohabitation?

2.  Should the mere fact of marriage, however long or short, prima facie justify an equal share in any property owned by my spouse?

3.  If the equal sharing principle is justifiable on divorce, ought we to implement it during marriage by adopting a regime of community of property?

4.  Is the best solution to female and child poverty following divorce:

(i)  to get all parents (married or divorced) into the workforce, improving the flexibility of working hours and conditions and the quality and availability of child-care facilities;

(ii)  to increase levels of state support to enable parents who wish to do so to care for their children at home;

(iii)  to increase the levels of private support following divorce from those respondents who can afford to pay it;

(iv)  to encourage equal sharing of child-care and other domestic responsibilities by parents during marriage and following divorce;

(v)  a combination of all or any of these strategies?

5.  How different in practice would the Law Commission’s recommendations for ‘qualifying nuptial agreements’ be from the position achieved by the Supreme Court in Radmacher?

6. Are Alison Diduck and others right to argue that the decision in Radmacher undermines the achievements of Miller, McFarlane?

7. If, as Harris, George and Herring (2011) FL 367 note, it is not possible for the spouses to agree that ‘the wearing of a yellow hat’ will constitute grounds for divorce, why – if at all – should it be possible for them to reach a binding agreement about the financial consequences of divorce?