Liverpool & South West Lancashire FHS - Forum

Hello folks hope you're all well.
I've come across a second family by my grandfather ( was known about )
and now wonder how I'd find a divorce record for him & his first wife?

Cazz

Hi

What time frame are we talking about ????

Hello Cazz,
Bear in mind that before the 1950s divorce was usually a long and often very expensive procedure. In Victorian days it would be almost impossible for a working class person to get a divorce. It was not uncommon for a couple to split up and go on to 'live-in-sin' as it were with another partner and have another family without getting married until the 'other half' had died. I've at least 3 instances in my lot.

As I understand the 'history' of divorce, later, in the 1920s and 30s, divorce proceedings could be held in the local courts instead of London. If the aggrieved party was prepared to wait for about 10 years of actual separation and had good grounds for divorce, such as non-consummation of the marriage, a Decree Absolute was almost a 'rubber stamp' job at minimal cost.

I've got one of the latter in my rellies and didn't my aunt then marry in Scotland 3 months before the divorce was final and thereby commit bigamy!
Dickiesam

Hi Cazz,

You might want to try this.

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/fami ... hp=Divorce

Jan

Hi
Time frame would be from 1938 onwards.
Turns out the relative I'm looking at was unwell and admitted into a local mental hospital. Not sure if mental illness would be grounds for someone to divorce their spouse?

Cazz

Hi Cazz,
From what I have read while tracking down a divorce in my lot between 1925 and 1935, I don't think that mental illness would normally be considered as grounds for a divorce. However, if that illness was of a very serious nature, such as schizophrenia, that required a person to be in a secure unit for virtually the rest of their life, which would have been the procedure back then, it is possible that it would be considered as grounds for divorce.

It is also possible that the ill person was simply 'abandoned' to their fate in the mental hospital while the spouse set up a relationship with someone else. There may not have been a divorce and any second marriage could have been bigamous.

If you are sure there was a divorce, then finding the divorce papers will reveal what actually happened.
Dickiesam

I've found some very interesting information about annulments & on what
grounds.
Hope this is ok here's a link scroll down to annulment.

http://www.familyhistory.uk.com/content/view/548/29/

and this "Just before the Second World War, in 1938, a further Act of Parliament came into force which extended the grounds on which divorce was admissible, to include desertion, cruelty and insanity. The Act also introduced some other, less important, grounds; a time-bar to divorce – no petition for divorce could be presented before the first anniversary of the marriage – and some additional grounds for decrees of nullity. The situation remained unchanged for some thirty years when, the Divorce Reform Act of 1969, which was subsequently consolidated into the Matrimonial Causes Act 1973, attempted to change the whole philosophy underlying the petitioning and obtaining a divorce. The concepts of the ‘guilty party’ and a ‘matrimonial offence’ were removed and replaced by a solitary ground for divorce: ‘the irretrievable breakdown of marriage’. Such breakdown could be demonstrated by the petitioner proving one or more of the five ‘facts’ (adultery, behaviour, desertion, two years’ separation with respondent’s consent to divorce, five years’ separation). Divorce could only be petitioned after three years’ of marriage, unless there were exceptional circumstances. "