The Owens decision strengthens the need for divorce reform & no fault divorce, says David Emmerson
- The Court of Appeal’s rejection of Tini Owens’s petition for divorce highlights the difficulties that parties can face when a divorce is contested and bolsters the momentum for legal reform.
On 24 March 2017 the Court of Appeal, which included the President of the family court, refused the appeal of Mrs Tini Owens against the refusal of His Honour Judge Tolson, to grant the wife a divorce. The decision of the trial judge was that even though he found that the marriage had broken down and the prospects of reconciliation hopeless, he nonetheless did not find that the wife had proved the allegations in her unreasonable behaviour petition.
The task for the Court of Appeal was to consider whether or not the judge was “wrong” in coming to this conclusion on the facts and therefore, the Court of Appeal entitled to interfere with the trial judge’s decision pursuant to CPR 52.11(3)(a).
The facts of the case are, in many ways, unremarkable. It was a long marriage with grown up children.
