Paul Vincenti, Mosta
How divorce affects marital partners (1)
The wife-beater, out of sight in this billboard, will be set free by divorce. Photo: Darrin Zammit Lupi
Will women be worse off with Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando’s divorce Bill? I believe they will.
The divorce law will force a woman into a divorce that she may not even want. It will allow a married man to divorce his wife, possibly in exchange for a younger, more attractive woman. He will be able to just walk out on his marriage and family to get a divorce – no questions asked. I have never heard of anyone being allowed to negate on a legal contract without incurring penalties. Not until Dr Pullicino Orlando presented his no-fault divorce law that is wholly geared against women.
A divorced man may choose to remarry and have another child. Provided that he is able to demonstrate that he cannot financially support his new family and at the same time pay maintenance in respect of his first marriage, he may quite possibly apply to the courts to request that he stops any child maintenance allocated to his first wife and children. This is a travesty.
The divorce movement claim that a battered woman should be given a second chance. Who in their right mind wants a woman to undergo such abuse anyway? Of course, the wife-beater was kept conveniently out of sight in their billboard that depicted the grim looking woman with a black eye.
The truth is that the wife-beater will also be set free with divorce. Freed to remarry and in all likelihood continue to abuse another wife. How then did divorce solve the issue of wife beating? Simply, it did not solve anything. It just shifted the problem onto another woman.
The proposed divorce law is perfectly crafted to suit men with the divorced women of Malta and their children becoming poorer and even more dependent on men.
This is of course the worst possible kind of divorce as it favours one sex over the other and the siblings of the second marriage over those of the first. This divorce law will create a subgroup, a new minority class of divorced women and their fatherless children.
The anti-family movement have gone to enormous lengths to disguise the implications of this law by reframing it and calling it “responsible”. I feel that the women of Malta deserve far better than a divorce law that places them at a disadvantage to men.
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Gabriella Zammit
May 23rd 2011, 21:39
"Freed to remarry and in all likelihood continue to abuse another wife" should this be the MALTESE LAW duty to protect the citizins, if the wife is been abused then the husband should have a really harsh punishment and plus he should not be allowed to marry again! And why in your openion the man has to be married to beat his partner?
A Hili
May 23rd 2011, 18:59
What makes you think that women won't remarry? This is 2011. Women are not the helpless, pathetic creatures you make them out to be. As a woman I feel far more degraded by your letter than by the potential introduction of divorce legislation and I do not need you or anyone else to decide what is best for me.
Mr Michael Debono
May 23rd 2011, 16:24
Why persist in calling the pro-divorce movment anti family. They are not, as much as the No to divorce are not.
A husband who treat his wife badly and has separated from his wife, he might very well cohabit with another woman who does not know his habit and be herself a victim. Hence the argument that divorce (only) will permit someone who beats his wife to cohabit with another woman does not hold water. He is always free to deceive other women unless he is exposed and perhaps condemned to prison and thus be tainted perhaps for ever.
Dave Alan Caruana
May 23rd 2011, 15:35
As the divorce law will allow a married man to divorce his wife, it will also allow a married woman to divorce her husband. A divorced woman may choose to remarry and have another child. It could allow a woman to remarry a younger, more attractive man.
There is no gender mentioned anywhere in the bill, no-fault applies equally to man or woman, and the picture you are painting of women clinging to their wayward husbands is rather unflattering to women in general.
Charlie Borg
May 23rd 2011, 14:25
It is disgusting, despicable and unchristian of people like Paul Vincenti to claim that the movement in question is 'anti-family'. Is there anyone on earth who can possibly be anti-family? This term is in the fantasy-world that Vincenti lives in. It is disgusting, the way some people are carrying on, with the blessing of Church and PN. Disgusting that we are witnessing lay people and priests, going to old people's homes to encourage and coerce the senior citizens there to vote against divorce.
Mr Maria Camilleri
May 23rd 2011, 11:34
Thank you very much. However, as a woman, I think I can decide for myself whether I want to divorce from a violent or cheating or disinterested husband.
A divorced woman may also decide to marry another man and have another child. It is definitely more fair then the current situation, where after separation the woman has to remain celebrate in order to retain maintenance, even if it was her spouse who walked out !
Us poor unemployed old frumpy Maltese housewives, we're all just waiting there like potatoes for our very frisky husbands to walk out on us !