Adultery: Adultery is a common ground for divorce in England because, like it offers "instant" divorce where it applies whereas the other three grounds for divorce involve compulsory long delays.
: "Unreasonable behaviour" is the most frequent ground for divorce in English divorce law. Divorce in England & Wales is based on "irretrievable breakdown" of the marriage but this breakdown must be proved by evidence of these five facts.
: If one party to a marriage "deserts" the other for a continuous period of two years then it is possible to seek a divorce on this ground.
: Of all the grounds for divorce this is the one, which lends itself best to the so-called "amicable" divorce. There are no allegations of behaviour made and the matter must necessarily proceed by consent.
: If a marriage has irretrievably broken down and the parties have lived apart for a continuous period of five years then either party may seek to obtain a divorce regardless of whether the other party consents or not.
Three of these grounds - desertion, two and five years' separation - involve considerable periods of delay before obtaining a divorce is possible at all. At least two years in the case of the first two and five years in the case of the last. Similarly, the parties cannot use adultery if there has been none. This means that "unreasonable behaviour" is the method of choice for most couples who want an "instant" divorce in cases where no adultery is involved.
Although divorces based on the last three grounds are by no means uncommon, in practice most divorces are based either on unreasonable behaviour or adultery and the reason for this would seem to be that neither involve the wait which the other grounds involve. When a marriage breaks down it is not usually too difficult to find some instances of unreasonable behaviour on either or both sides and so this is, not unnaturally, seen as a route to a quick divorce.
