ABSTRACT
It will be clear from the above overview of the modern law of divorce that in the past 30 years the post-Divorce Reform Act 1969 regime has been developed to provide a framework of divorce and related law which can dissolve or annul marriages, or issue decrees of judicial separation as appropriate, and decide or formalise all consequent financial matters. The related statutes-the Children Act 1989 and the Pt IV of the FLA 1996-can deal on an entirely freestanding basis with matters concerning the children of a marriage and/or with domestic violence and occupational rights problems. It is important that students understand at an early stage that these jurisdictions are separate, and that although there are special provisions within both the 1989 and the 1996 Acts relating to the married as distinguished from the unmarried, these two latter statutes are designed to cater overall for both the married and the unmarried in a comprehensive framework. Thus, family law seems to be moving consciously away from the concept of the married family as the core unit of society. In effect, we now have a law of divorce (for the married), a law of children (with parents of either status) and a law of domestic violence (applying not only to the married and the unmarried but to a much wider class of ‘associated persons’ whose original connection with one another is through a concept of extended family of the most informal type). The next chapters in this section, Chapters 8-11, examine the law of divorce as such and the financial matters ancillary to divorce or where divorce has not yet been initiated: child law and domestic violence topics are covered separately in later discrete sections.
