§ 3.56 p.m.
§ Dame Patricia Hornsby-Smith (Chislehurst)I beg to move,
That this House calls attention to published Working Paper No. 42 of the Law Commission on Family Property Law, dated 26th October, 1971, which highlights the lack of protection afforded by the common law and statute law, and the injustices suffered by wives and children in relation to assets acquired by the husband and wife during marriage; and emphasises the importance of Her Majesty's Government reviewing the whole field of legislation concerned with matrimonial ownership of shareable property and assets prior to introducing a family property law for the protection of spouses and to make provision commensurate with the contribution made by them to the matrimonial home and the family.This has to do with family property law. I thank my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State for the Environment for his gallantry in finishing his speech in time to allow the one female here to put on record, even if only for a few brief moments, a matter concerning women's rights.This is an exploratory Motion based on a critical analysis of family property law undertaken by the Law Commission and recorded in its published paper No. 42. I hope that all women's organisations—and men's, too—will study what is an invaluable consultative document, and I hope that the Government will be able to take action to ameliorate the very real hardships which women—divorced, deserted, or through the loss of their husbands—suffer because of the absence of a family law.
Those who marry in church hear the bridegroom say, "With all my worldly goods I thee endow". As the groom carries the bride over the threshold of the matrimonial home he can forget all about that because the law does not make provision to hold him to his pledge. The law on property nowhere recognises "family" property as such. The basis of ownership always remains individual or, in bathroom towel terms, it is "His" or "Hers".
986 Over the years Parliament, in its wisdom, has genuinely sought to eliminate the grosser injustices to the married women deserted or divorced. The Married Women's Property Act, 1882, allowed women to retain their own property on marriage and to acquire assets in their own right if they had the financial ability or opportunity so to do. But it is not with the astute, educated women of property my Motion is concerned; it is concerned with the rights of millions of married women, of whom an increasing number yearly suffer divorce, desertion, or the death of their spouses and who, as a result, have no automatic right, legally spelt out and defined, to claim a fair proportion of what in general and by general acceptance would be termed family property.
In most cases the matrimonial home is owned by or is in the name of the husband. Equally, he may have other property in shares, or cars purchased ostensibly by him, which are exclusively his assets; but the financial contribution to the home by the employed wife may have provided him with the means and opportunity to save and acquire such assets. But they belong to him alone. The recent Divorce Law Reform Act, under which a woman can be divorced or deserted without her desire or wish, makes it even more urgent to look into the question of protecting the rights of women who may be divorced in later life through no desire of their own and left with no real right or claim to the matrimonial property.
The new divorce law reform requires that a proper and adequate contribution shall be made but, on an average industrial wage of £30 a week, if the man has made another liaison and has a natural family elsewhere, what chance and what allocation can that woman expect for a proper and adequate contribution to maintain herself in a position which has any relationship whatever to that which she held—