In Georgian and Regency England, it was difficult to end a marriage. Basically, the options were an informal separation, a legal separation, or a divorce. In fact, in some ways, it would be fair to say that the three were stages in a process—with the couple probably no longer living together by the time one of them (usually the man) went before the Ecclesiastical Courts for a separation, and a separation being one of the requirements for a divorce.
Annulment is not one of the three for the simple reason that an annulment is a finding that the marriage was void at its beginning; that is, that the marriage ceremony was not valid, and therefore the couple were never married.
Divorce was difficult to obtain, expensive, and seldom allowed the parties to marry again. The first step was to apply to the Ecclesiastical Court. But the Court could only rule that the couple be permitted to separate (a divorce a menso et thoro, a separation from bed and board). They no longer lived together, and the husband was no longer responsible for providing a home for the wife (although he was still responsible for her debts.
A man could be granted such a ruling when adultery was proven against a wife. A woman had to also prove that the adultery was aggravated by life-threatening cruelty, bigamy, or incest.
If she obtained such a ruling, the woman had no right to access to her children.
A husband could also sue his wife’s lover under civil law for ‘wounding another man’s property’ and for depriving him of her services as household manager. Women had no such right.
The next step, if one of the parties wanted to remarry, was to take a private bill to Parliament for ‘relief’. The proceeding were expensive, long, messy, and public. It was very rare for the divorce finding to include a clause that permitted the ‘at fault’ party to remarry.
“Between 1670 and 1857, 379 Parliamentary divorces were requested and 324 were granted. Of those 379 requests, eight were by wives, and only four of those were granted.” (Wright, 2004)
https://jasna.org/publications-2/persuasions-online/vol36no1/bailey/
https://englishhistoryauthors.blogspot.com/2017/01/divorce-regency-style.html
Only two divorces were granted to women on the Regency period and in both the husband had committed adultery with the wife’s sister.A woman who complained that her husband wanted to kill her had to beg several times just to be allowed to separate from him. Another was refused a divorce though her husband was cruel, set his mistress up over the household, and deprived her of her children. Though the original bill of divorce quite often did forbid the guilty couple to marry, this clause was generally struck from the bill before it was passed.. THe process and law in SCotland was different and there a prohibition against the guilty couple marrying was usually a part of the decree. The couple then had to go to England to marry. Wives could divorce their husbands in Scotland if the man lived in Scotland for six weeks and committed adultery there.
All very fertile ground for the romance writer.
Women today have it so much better in terms of divorce. Thank yiu for this information!
Absolutely! In our parts of the world, at least. Fancy having no right to see your children! In the made to order story I’m finishing at the moment, the wife has been in hiding for thirteen years, to protect the child she gave birth to after her husband (falsely) accused her of adultery.