{"id":11828,"date":"2018-07-25T05:42:32","date_gmt":"2018-07-25T09:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/?p=11828"},"modified":"2018-07-30T07:03:29","modified_gmt":"2018-07-30T11:03:29","slug":"unhappy-wife-68-who-wants-to-divorce-her-mushroom-farmer-husband-of-40-years-is-forced-to-stay-married-to-him-after-losing-supreme-court-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/2018\/07\/25\/unhappy-wife-68-who-wants-to-divorce-her-mushroom-farmer-husband-of-40-years-is-forced-to-stay-married-to-him-after-losing-supreme-court-fight\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Unhappy’ wife, 68, who wants to divorce her husband of 40 years is forced to stay married"},"content":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0RICHARD SPILLETT\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n

A woman who wants to divorce her husband of 40 years because she says their marriage is unhappy has lost a Supreme Court fight.\u00a0\u00a0Five Supreme Court justices have ruled that Tini Owens must stay married to Hugh Owens.\u00a0\u00a0The justices upheld rulings by a Family Court judge and Court of Appeal judges.<\/p>\n

Mrs Owens, who is in her late 60s, wants a divorce and says her marriage to Mr Owens, who is in his 80s, is loveless and has broken down.\u00a0\u00a0She says he has behaved unreasonably and that she should not reasonably be expected to stay married.\u00a0\u00a0But Mr Owens refuses to agree to a divorce and denies Mrs Owens’ allegations about his behaviour.\u00a0\u00a0He says if their marriage has irretrievably broken down it is because she had an affair, or because she is ‘bored’.\u00a0\u00a0Mr and Mrs Owens married in 1978 and lived in Broadway, Worcestershire, judges have heard.\u00a0\u00a0Mrs Owens petitioned for divorce in 2015 after moving out.<\/p>\n

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Supreme Court justices analysed rival legal arguments, which revolved around concepts of ‘unreasonable’ behaviour and ‘fault’, at a Supreme Court hearing in London in May and delivered a ruling on Wednesday.\u00a0 One, Lord Wilson, said justices had ruled against Mrs Owens ‘with reluctance’.\u00a0 He said the ‘question for Parliament’ was whether the law governing ‘entitlement to divorce’ remained ‘satisfactory’.\u00a0 Lord Wilson indicated that Mrs Owens would be able to divorce in 2020, when the couple have been separated for five years.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Mrs
\nMrs Owen’s husband says she is ‘bored’ rather than because of any legal grounds<\/p>\n

Another, Supreme Court president Lady Hale, said she found the case ‘very troubling’.\u00a0\u00a0But she said it was not for judges to ‘change the law’.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Mrs Owens had already lost two rounds of the battle.\u00a0\u00a0In 2016 she failed to persuade a Family Court judge to allow her to divorce.\u00a0\u00a0Last year three appeal judges ruled against her after a Court of Appeal hearing in London.\u00a0\u00a0They said Mrs Owens had failed to establish that her marriage had, legally, irretrievably broken down and dismissed her challenge to a ruling by Judge Robin Tolson.\u00a0\u00a0One appeal judge said she reached her conclusion with ‘no enthusiasm whatsoever’ but that Parliament would have to decide whether to introduce ‘no fault’ divorce on demand.\u00a0\u00a0Another said Parliament had ‘decreed’ that being in a ‘wretchedly unhappy marriage’ was not a ground for divorce.\u00a0\u00a0Mrs Owens’ lawyers say she should not have to prove that Mr Owens’ behaviour has been ‘unreasonable’ – only that she should not ‘reasonably be expected’ to remain with him.\u00a0\u00a0They say the case is about ‘proper interpretation’ of legislation.<\/p>\n

Barrister Philip Marshall QC, who leads Mrs Owens’ legal team, told Supreme Court justices that a ‘modest shift’ of focus in interpretation of legislation was required.\u00a0\u00a0But barrister Nigel Dyer QC, who leads Mr Owens’ legal team, disagreed and raised concern about the introduction of divorce on ‘demand’.<\/p>\n

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Source\u00a0\u00a0dailymail.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By\u00a0RICHARD SPILLETT\u00a0 A woman who wants to divorce her husband of 40 years because she says their marriage is unhappy has lost a Supreme Court fight.\u00a0\u00a0Five Supreme Court justices have ruled that Tini Owens must […]<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":11830,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[88],"class_list":{"0":"post-11828","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"category-uk","9":"tag-divorce","10":"pmpro-has-access"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11828"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11828\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11885,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11828\/revisions\/11885"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}