Divorce would weigh down on families and the social security services, the anti-divorce movement said.

With the introduction of divorce, a person’s salary would have to sustain two families or more because whoever divorced could remarry and the spouse in the second marriage would have a right for the salary, the anti-divorce movement said.

However, on the introduction of divorce, women who were bringing up their offspring would depend on the social security services once the breadwinner started maintaining another family, the movement said.

If a person’s salary was not enough to pay maintenance to the first family, this family would have to depend on some other form of income. It was obvious that a person who found himself in this situation would seek help from the state, a spokesman for the anti-divorce movement said.

However, pro-divorce spokes-man Deborah Schembri said that if a man remarried, he would still be obliged to pay maintenance to his former wife, unless she renounces to that right at separation stage. A woman would depend on social security services only if she would have been found at fault at separation level. This was equally applicable to men.

The introduction of divorce did not change the current situation where women were already dependent on such services if found at fault when they filed for separation. On the other hand, divorce enabled a woman to sever all ties with the social security services as she would be supported by her new husband, Dr Schembri said.

But the anti-divorce movement spokesman insisted that, according to the proposed law, a couple did not have to be legally separated to ask for divorce.