... breach. Apart from death, it can be terminated only by a formal legal act pronounced by a court of competent jurisdiction.6 It will be argued that, as marriage is a construct of the state in the sense that it is an arrangement by which it sanctions. Therefore, the divorce law must not be seen to undermine this. This will be achieved by briefly examining the causes and social explanations for the increasing divorce rate, providing a history of the development of the divorce law, which will illustrate the thinking and aims, which have led to the present law. Focus will then be given to how the present law and its reforms play a role in upholding and saving the marriage. Statistics on divorce Although, marriage is declining in popularity divorce rates have seen a fivefold increase between 1961 and 1991.7 In 2001 there were 143,818 divorces, seventy percent of which were first marriages. ...

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