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Matrimonial Causes (Amendment) Bill 1994
Following is the speech by the Secretary for Home Affairs, Mr Michael Suen, on resumption of the second reading debate and at the committee stage of the Matrimonial Causes (Amendment) Bill 1994:
Second reading debate of the Matrimonial Causes (Amendment) Bill
Mr President.
I would like to thank the Honourable Mrs Peggy Lam, Convenor of the Bills Committee to study the Matrimonial Causes (Amendment) Bill 1994, and the other Members of the Bills Committee for their constructive suggestions, time and effort spent in scrutinising the Bill.
The law of divorce in Hong Kong has remained largely unchanged for the past twenty years or so. Over that period, community attitudes towards divorce have altered. There is now a widespread view that current divorce legislation imposes unnecessarily onerous requirement on those seeking a divorce. This view is reflected in the findings of a comprehensive survey of public opinion commissioned by the Law Reform Commission. Further to those findings and its consultations with experts and interested parties working in this field, the Law Reform Commission made recommendations in 1992 for an overhaul of the divorce law. The Bill seeks to implement these recommendations.
As I mentioned when I introduced the Bill into this Council on 12 October last year, its underlying objective is to reduce the hardship, acrimony and distress that so often accompany divorce proceedings. Such ill-feeling can arise in part from the current requirement that divorce proceedings must be conducted on an adversarial basis, with one party as petitioner and the other party as respondent. To avoid this, the Bill provides for the introduction of a new non-adversarial means of obtaining a divorce by joint application based on either one year's prior separation or one year's period of notice. Under the latter procedure, the couple are not obliged to separate. This will mitigate difficulties caused by the current requirement to find separate accommodation in advance of a divorce where prior separation is relied on in divorce proceedings.