One of the biggest pieces of news for divorce solicitors in 2022 was a fundamental change in legislation which ended what had become one of the most puzzling contradictions in UK law.

Up until April 2022, couples needed to assign blame for the breakup of a marriage, which could turn what had been an amicable split acrimonious, or force couples to artificially assign blame to ensure a divorce gets through or risk having to wait years for a divorce to be approved.

However, when a case highlighted the reality of this situation, the public outcry led to a change in the law.

The case of Owens v Owens is especially strange, although with elements common to a lot of more complicated divorce cases. Mr Hugh and Mrs Tini Owens married in 1978 but the latter filed a divorce petition in 2015, claiming the marriage had irrevocably broken down.

Typically cases like this are not contested and the hearing and blame apportioning is largely a formality, but in this case, Mr Owens contested it, leading to a divorce hearing where Mrs Owens’ claims of unreasonable behaviour were rejected.

Subsequent appeals all the way up to the UK Supreme Court were rejected with an increasing level of unease shared amongst the judges that ruled on the case, not least of which forcing Mrs Owens to wait until 2020 to file a divorce using the five-year rule.

One of the biggest concerns was that with the precedent set that a much greater level of “unacceptable behaviour” was needed to get a divorce granted, an abusive or controlling marriage could be continued by a spouse dragging their heels and contesting that this behaviour was not unreasonable enough.

As well as this, there is the unfairness at play that so many people can get a divorce so easily and yet a case such as this ends up with two people stuck in a marriage neither of them are happy in.

Ultimately this led to legal reforms in the shape of the Divorce, Dissolution and Separation Act 2020, which came into force in April this year.