ROMAN Catholic bishops accused the Government yesterday of undermining marriage by proposing that couples should enter into prenuptial agreements.
The bishops say that calling for couples to make prenuptial agreements dealing with the ownership and disposal of cash and property favours the rich and builds a failure clause into marriage.
Their response to the Government’s Green Paper questions the rationale of including measures related to divorce in proposals intended to strengthen marriage.
The Right Rev Peter Smith, Bishop of East Anglia, said: “Prenuptial agreements seem to imply an expectation of marriage breakdown and undermine the notion of total commitment to marriage. They also appear to favour the financially stronger party.”
Mgr Kieran Conry, who is involved in training counsellors for Catholic Marriage Care, a relationship counselling service for people of all religion or none, said: “It is like having a warranty on a car. It assumes the car will go wrong at some stage. A prenuptial agreement is a warranty on a relationship.
“It indicates a lack of faith in their commitment on behalf of the couple.”
The bishops want the Government to recognise the role that poverty plays in family breakdown and argue that tackling this is an “essential element” to promote stable family life.
