France eliminates the “conjugal duty” to have sexual relations in marriage and reinforces consent

Currently, the Civil Code French stipulates in his article 215 that “spouses mutually commit to a life together.”

Although in a literal sense French law has not imposed this premise within marriage since the 90s, inertia maintained its application in many sentences, due to a somewhat ambiguous reading.

A Napoleonic law

In your original writing in Napoleon’s time, in 1804, imposed a “right of cohabitation”, which in successive reforms was transformed into a “community of life”, interpreted as a “conjugal duty” or the obligation to maintain sexual relations with one’s spouse.

To amend it, the text approved by the Lower House adds that “this life in common does not create any obligation for spouses to have sexual relations”, a phrase that will be read aloud in the town halls by the civil registrars during the ceremony of each marriage, as reported by LCP, the French state channel for the two parliamentary chambers.

In the 90s, jurisprudence made it clear that Any non-consensual relationship, even within marriage, was rape. and in 1992 it was established as an aggravating circumstance that this crime was committed between spouses.

Until 2010, a mention establishing “the presumption of consent between spouses” was not eliminated from the Civil Code, but even today some judges considered that The absence of marital relations could be a reason for divorce.

One of the latest cases led France to be condemned at the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg after a 2020 ruling that recognized the responsibility of the wife in a divorce for her refusal to have sexual relations for 10 years.

The woman had filed for divorce gender violence to which she was being subjected, but the husband denied it and alleged that fact to obtain all the advantages in that divorce.

A year ago, Strasbourg condemned France for that case, considering that “marriage cannot be equated with consent to sexual relations.”

Faced with this scenario, two deputies, the centrist Paul Christophe and the environmentalist Marie-Charlotte Garinpresented a bill that has passed the committee process and reached the plenary session this Wednesday.

With this law, its authors pursue more than a legislative revolution, a paradigm shift within marriageas evidenced by a recent survey that reveals that half of French people admit to having had relationships within marriage without meaning to.

Furthermore, women, who are often the main victims of divorce proceedings, are the majority when it comes to admitting having had relations with their spouse against their will, although only 14% of them equate it to rape.

Marriage “cannot be a bubble where consent for sexual relations is acquired, definitive and for life,” said the deputy of the Ecologist and Socialist Party. Marie-Charlotte Garin.