Dialogue: End to de factos and messy splits?

By JOHN ROUGHAN

The most constructive social move made by this Government so far went without mention in the Budget. It is a bill to amend the Matrimonial Property Act 1976.

It could do more to relieve poverty than income-related rent or anything else trumpeted on Thursday. And it could change social behaviour in a way the Government might not intend.

The bill has been lying around Parliament for a couple of years. Among other things, it extends matrimonial property rights to de facto and homosexual couples. Or it does now. The previous Government would not touch the homosexual question and was doubtful about de factos, too.

In the end, after public hearings, National left the legislation on the table. Labour has picked it up with late feminist enthusiasm. Words like husband, wife and marriage have been expunged. Everybody is a partner. If the bill is passed, the Matrimonial Property Act will become the Property (Relationships) Act.

Once people have lived together for three years the law will regard them as married as far as property rights are concerned. It virtually closes the de facto option.

Technically there will be a way out for people who want to live together but fully preserve personal property. They can make a legal contract to waive their rights under the bill. But when are they likely to do that? Not in the first flush of love. The point in a contented relationship that couples make arrangements for its failure, is the point it is going to fail.

So this bill just might cause people to think more carefully at the beginning. And at the three-year point, it will force a moment of truth. If the law is going to give you the same obligations anyway, you might as well make it a joyous occasion, or call it quits.

Even if it doesn't much alter behaviour, the bill should at least stop the law casting women and children into poverty when a marriage fails. It will invite the courts to relax the 50:50 division of property in recognition of women (usually) who sacrifice part of their careers and some of their future earning potential to care for children.

That may be a dubious argument now that career-minded women are typically back at work within weeks, or at most months, of giving birth. And most of those who lost years from a career in times past will have fully regained their earning power by now.

But the pretext doesn't greatly matter so long as children do not suffer a drastic drop in their circumstances because the law has strictly divided their home between their parents. Opponents of the bill say it will undermine the whole 50-50 principle and entice women to try for more. Let's hope it does.

And lets hope mothers left with children are successful regardless of career consequences.

The majority of departing fathers, I suspect, would readily leave their wives and children in the family home and the law permits them to do so, but it tends not to happen.

The man's lawyer, simply serving the best interests of his client, feels obliged to advise that this is a stressful time for everyone, him as well as his family, and he should not relinquish his rights in a manner he might later regret. The law in its wisdom encourages a "clean break."

So the house is sold, the spoils divided. The man is soon reasonably content, living in a new house mortgaged against his income, which has not suffered except for the extra $10 a week that Inland Revenue takes out to compensate the taxpayers for the $200 a week it is paying to his former wife and children. The lawyer has looked after his interests in that regard, too.

Mother and children, meanwhile, have moved into a rented house in a poorer part of town until, she hopes, she can find a home half as good as the one she had, for half the price. Soon she needs to dip into the money to buy a lawnmower, repair the car, replace the microwave and a thousand other things.

Oddly enough, when looking to explain poverty social researchers almost always overlook the consequences of a high divorce rate. Universities are endlessly publishing discoveries of the obvious - that unemployment is associated with low incomes and that market rewards widen the earning differentials. But they don't want to know about divorce.

The Treasury and the Labour Department, though, have an investigation under way which could eventually throw some light on the way that disparities occur in household incomes.

A preliminary conclusion of that study emerged this week in a report by a researcher, Des O'Dea, commissioned by the Treasury to examine the causes of change in income distribution overall.

O'Dea estimates that 10 to 25 per cent of the increase in inequality in New Zealand is "associated with changes in household composition [such as the growth of single parent households]." That means family breakup is at least as destructive as unemployment or anything else that reduces people's circumstances at times.

The Matrimonial Property Amendment Bill is before a parliamentary committee and open to public submissions by July 7. Its full consequences might not be widely realised yet. When they are, its passage could be difficult.