§ Mrs. Wiseasked the Attorney-General in how many cases in the past year, or in the latest available year, maintenance was granted to the former wife even though there were no children aged under 18 years; and in how many of these cases the former wife was under 50 years of age.
§ The Attorney-General:I regret that this information is not readily available in a form which makes it possible to relate each of the figures requested to the others. Such a correlation could be obtained only by inspection of all the individual court files in question. According to information available centrally, however, maintenance and other financial orders were made in at least 64,817 divorce cases in 1977. Information is not available in relation to children under 18, but out of all divorces in 1977 51,564 involved couples with no children under 16. 113,834 of all divorces in 1977 involved wives aged under 50.