The front page headline of The Daily Mail last November 16 read: Insure Yourself Against Divorce: Minister’s Advice On Marriage As Huge Legal Aid Crackdown Looms. With various countries coming to grips with very tough economic realities, some governments have come up with various solutions towards reducing their high deficits. The UK took a number of measures, some intended to increase revenue, like raising VAT by three per cent, and others targeting expenditure reduction.

One such idea is to scrap legal aid for divorce lawyers. This means that on the day of one’s marriage, when the vows of trust and affection “till death do us part” are being made, an insurance policy document will have to be signed to protect oneself from the legal cost of any eventual divorce. This may sound absurd but this is what Justice Secretary Kenneth Clarke actually suggested.

Divorce simply breaks the concept of marriage, there are no two ways about it. It simply reduces a marriage to the level of any other contract for the period of time a couple decide to be together with a termination clause when things don’t remain going so well. Divorce does not simply introduce what those who propose it perceive it to be a right, it actually destroys the very essence of what marriage should be. My point is not about the Christian meaning of marriage but it is the reality we see out there in the countries that have introduced it and the actual consequences of ever-growing rates of marriage failures and family breakdowns. Pro-divorce proponents want us to ignore the harmful consequences of divorce on families, children and society at large. They merely want to present it as a right to remarry rather than the right to break a marriage and a family. Now that is some right!

But the real question we need to ask is really a very simple one: Will our society be better off with divorce or worse off?

From an economic perspective some new activity will result, new jobs in legal aid, insurance companies and brokers, new apartments, new receptions for those that remarry. Quoting from the same article: “Yesterday, one of Mr Clarke’s ministerial team, Jonathan Djanogly, said: ‘Couples are too ready and too willing to run to the courts. We think there can be a wider market in before-the-event insurance. We would be creating a new market but we want to see a market.’”

But is this really the way to generate jobs?

Clearly, from a social perspective the consequences are devastating. Judging by what Mr Djanogly said that “Couples are too ready and too willing to run to the courts”. Divorce becomes the easy way out. Is this the society we would like to see? Let us not fool ourselves that we can have such a tough law it will not be so attractive for couples to go for divorce. If so, why is such a fuss being made to have it in the first place? All divorce laws had been introduced with restrictions and limitations but today they all allow quick divorces where you can divorce by simply signing a couple of papers, not even going to court.

Recently, I was at table with a couple of foreign investors when the issue of divorce cropped up and they were quite surprised Malta still did not have such a law. They were even more astonished that I was against its introduction. The gentleman on my right described to me how he had unfortunately passed through it after only two years of marriage. I asked him a very simple question: Do you think that were divorce not an option you would have given your marriage a second try. For a moment he hesitated and then he said: “Honestly, I would”. Clearly, he still felt something for the woman he had divorced but things happened so fast, it was so easy to do it they were divorced before they even knew it. A couple of years later and he is now thinking it could have worked after all.

Who of us does not have relatives abroad, say Australia or Canada, where divorce has been available for a very long time? Whenever I meet them I get the feeling the issue there is not divorce but why marry in the first place. Divorce is not about the possibility of remarrying because what happened in these countries is that it diluted the value and significance of marrying and eventually wiped it out completely as an option of starting a family.

If marriage is not a commitment “till death do us part” then why the hassle of marrying in the first place? There is nothing stopping you sticking around? At least, you save on having to take an insurance for the eventual breakdown and divorce. The new model is to simply stick around together, for as long as we are fine together, and when it is not so fine then we move on.

This is not the type of society I aspire to see. As a nation we are so proud of who we are but what makes us is our values and our endeavours. If we lose them there is nothing so special about us. We would become like all the rest: societies without a soul, where selfishness has become the mother of all values.

The author is Minister of Finance, the Economy and Investment.

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