Divorce in the 1960s uk

The Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 was a landmark step in women’s emancipation.
Penny Russell

The Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 gave women in England and Wales legal standing to use the civil courts to seek a decree of divorce or nullity, enabling them to leave unhappy unions and remarry.

It was the first Matrimonial Causes Act, culminating in our current statutory framework for divorce – set out in Matrimonial Causes Act 1973 – over a century later. The Victorian constitutional law scholar Albert Venn Dicey wrote in 1905: “The Divorce Act of 1857 on the face of it did no more than increase the facilities for obtaining divorce.

It in reality gave national sanction to the contractual view of marriage… [and has] given strength to the belief that women ought, in the eye of the law, to stand substantially on an equality with men”.

The Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Act 1857 came into effect on 1 January 1858 at which time all matrimonial litigation was transferred from the Church of England to a new secular Court for D

when was divorce made legal in england

when was divorce legalised in uk