Women are twice as likely as men to file for divorce, a legal conference in Dublin to mark the 10th anniversary of divorce heard yesterday.
Despite claims during the divorce referendum campaign a decade ago that men would be more likely to separate from women, the majority of divorce applications over the 10 years has been taken by women.
The number of divorces has grown steadily over the last decade, with 4,126 recorded in 2005. Just under 23,000 divorces have been recorded since 1997, while an estimated 85,000-90,000 marriages have broken down during the same period.
After the conference, solicitor Geoffrey Shannon said that while it was clear there had been a gradual increase in divorce year on year, the flood of cases predicted in some quarters never came to pass.
"It appears that the institutional reluctance to start divorce proceedings have given way to an acceptance of divorce within Irish society," he said.
The Law Society conference in the RDS in Dublin yesterday heard arguments for the courts to be given the power to issue a "clean break" in divorce proceedings, according to the speakers' scripts.
The "proper provision" principle in divorce legislation means that in most cases, the financial obligation of one spouse to another continues beyond the ending of the marriage.
In this sense, divorce legislation allows for repeated applications to the court for a reassessment of financial orders.
This is evident in recent decisions by the courts referred to by Inge Clissman SC, where parties were awarded further financial provision some time after a divorce was granted.
Mr Shannon said the absence of a clean break in divorces meant the liability of a spouse for an indefinite period of time.
"Our no-fault divorce system involves a lifelong spousal support obligation to maintain a former spouse which only terminates when the partner required to pay maintenance dies, or the claimant remarries," he said.
He said clearer guidance was needed on financial orders because at present a wide discretion was afforded to the courts in dealing with assets following the breakdown of a marriage.
In Britain, for example, three strands form the basis of awards: need, compensation and fair sharing of assets.
Trends there also showed the British courts were much more advantageous for a home-maker or dependent spouse compared to the Irish courts in divorce cases.
The courts in Britain tend to offer a 50-50 split of assets, while in Ireland the tendency is for one-third of net assets to be allocated to the dependent spouse.
