Do you remember when you made your marriage vows? The day you vowed to love your spouse till death do you part. You would have been so much in love and have plans for a life of happy moments surrounded by family looking forward to reaching old age together.
Many times it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t last till death puts you apart. You have hitches on the way and you both do not really care any longer about those vows. In fact they have become a dim memory. So let me remind you as I dissect the standard vows people make.
1. I take you as my lawfully wedded wife to have {or husband} and to hold from this day forward
-This part of the vow establishes a start date, a promise to have and hold
2. To love and to cherish from this day forward; in sickness and in health, for richer for poorer
– The purpose of the marriage, love comfort in all manner of conditions
3. To the exclusion of all other so long as we both shall live
– The nature of the marriage and the end date.
Unfortunately many marriages do not reach the end date. Divorce ends a number of them and this is usually preceded by a period of separation.
It has been argued that the marriage vows should keep the couple in the marriage. It needs be told that there is no legal basis for the vows we take in church. It is not part of written law and is mostly used at places of worship to enhance the solemnity of the service.
So if vows have no legal basis why is there such resistance to divorce on the excuse that there are vows that must be kept to? Marital vows are meant to be kept they say.
The vows that are taken at a wedding ceremony form one covenant, which once broken by either spouse can only be amended where the parties are able to work out their differences with the help of a counselor.
Would a couple who live away from each other, not by choice but by disagreement, still be said to be in a covenant of marriage because they have not divorced each other?
As in a commercial contract, do we need to write situations when the vow is broke into marriage vows? May be it time to re-write marriage vows.
I am SisiLawyer. I aim to make legal issues from relationships of the heart understandable.