Govt Senator decries divorce

A Government Senator today lamented a growing number of divorces being filed, suggesting that couples seemed hell-bent on ending their marriage instead of working things out.

Deputy president of the Senate, Rudolph Cappy Greenidge, who was speaking during the Family Law (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill, said there were way too many cases coming before the law courts.

He declared: “Only this morning I looked at the case list I saw about 25 family law matters before one particular judge and that judge was not the only one doing Family Law or with Family law cases before them other judges have Family Law cases before them as well. So you could imagine the volume of Family Law cases we have in our courts?

Senator Greenidge said the numbers seemed to be a clear indication that couples weren’t willing to do what it takes to make a marriage work.

He said: “Sometimes you sit and wonder: Why is it that there is this ballooning of family law cases?

“One school of thought is that we have made divorces in Barbados too easy.

“Parties nowadays are more tempted to jump off the marriage train than to make the marriage work. There are young people who are not at all willing to compromise in the way that my grandmother and my mother did.

“Not this young generation….”

The senator said the fact too that some law firms make their business by dealing with Family Law cases proved that the numbers have increased.

“Three lawyers in particular I know each practice is 90 per cent family law;  one of the three maybe as much as 99 per cent gives you some indication as to the amount of family law work that they have on their desk. They hardly worry about other legal matters.”

The attorney at law explained that it was now easier for couples to file for divorce.

“We have made it easy we have gone to something called no fault divorce. With no fault divorce one party only has to say this marriage has broken down irretrievably and that is the end of it.”

Greenidge pointed out that being able to file “no fault” has added to the numbers as well.

“In my mother and grandmother’s day you had to come with fault… you had to say there was desertion there was cruelty there was adultery not now. Some have said that divorces have skyrocketed since the “no fault” divorce came into being. When I started to practice family law was merely simmering now it is boiling over…”

“While filing no-fault has contributed to the increased number of divorces I have to say that independence of thought coupled with the financial independence of the Barbadian wife have contributed as well.”

He said the wives of this generation were way less tolerant that those ‘back in the day.

“Barbadians wives back then depended on everything from the husband. They couldn’t get a lawyer on their own. Those wives of yesterday were willing to put up with infidelity and verbal ause ’cause they thought themselves hemmed in. The wife of today would remove themselves from those situations and file for divorce.