New bill to speed up divorce will hinder efforts at marital reconciliation in Spain

Madrid, Spain, Nov 25, 2004 / 22:00 pm

The Institute on Family Policy in Spain denounced a new version of a Spain’s divorce law being proposed by the government, saying the measure would hinder efforts to bring about marital reconciliation by eliminating the time of separation required before a divorce could be filed.

This Friday the government is expected to approve the draft of the new measure which, although it does not introduce substantial modifications to the previous version of the law, it does present “cosmetic,” regressive and anti-family changes which are not supported by many family institutions, said the Institute.

In Spain 20% of marriages are reconciled during the time of separation prior to divorce, and therefore the fear is that the new measure will substantially increase the number of broken families in Spain.

The President of the Institute, Eduardo Hertfelder, warned that “the government is going to impose the dictatorship of break-ups because by eliminating the time of separation which existed up to now, married couples will not have enough time to reconcile with each other.”

Moreover, he pointed out that with this law, the marriage would become a matter completely under the control of one of the spouses, thus denying the other any right to defend the maintaining of the bond.

The Institute reported that empirical evidence shows that in the all of the countries where no-fault divorce is legal, the number of ruptured marriages is 2 to 7.5 times more than before the legal change.