CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.1    Background to the Study

          Divorce basically refers to the legal termination of a marriage. It can also be interpreted as the legal dissolution of a marriage. Merriam-Webster (2017) define divorce as the ending of a marriage by a legal process. However, it is evident that divorce involves Judicial Proceedings for its success. i.e., a divorce can only be attained successfully by the judgement of a Court. This is because divorce profoundly, is considered as a legal phenomenon which requires the absolute judgement of a Court of law for its attainment with specific conditions (Nwogugu, 2014).

          Irrespective of the processes involved in the legal termination of a marriage, overall divorce rates remain at historically high level. The widespread of divorce actually began in 1857. In Britain before 1857, a private Act of Parliament was required to obtain a divorce. This was an expensive procedure beyond the means of all but the wealthiest (Holborn & Haralambos, 2013). Since 1857 the cost of obtaining a divorce have been reduced and the grounds for divorce have been widened. After the abolishment of the Ecclesiastical Court in the United Kingdom in 1857, absolute divorce was then instituted (Olaniyi 2015). This idea affected British and American divorce law and administration for more than a century and it was then adopted by many other continents and countries (Levy, Robert J. “Divorce”. Microsoft Encarta, 2009). Nevertheless, divorce legislation was influenced by the idea of Matrimonial Offence, the notion that one or both spouses had wronged the other. Meanwhile, the Divorce Reform Act, which came into force in 1971: no longer emphasized the idea of Matrimonial Offence and so avoided the need for “guilty parties”. This made divorce considerably easier and accounts for its increase in 1971.

          Current trends suggests that close to two-thirds of new marriages will end in divorce. Similarly, Wilson and Smallwood (2008) nevertheless estimated that approximately 45 per cent of marriages in 2005 would end in divorce, and nearly half of these marriages would last less than 10 years. More precisely, the U.S. divorce rate is apparently 50 per cent, a figure that is popular with reporters. The statistic is true in the sense that each year about half as many divorces are granted as there are many ages performed. The totals are 2.2 million marriages and about 1 million divorces (Munson and Sutton 2005).

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