Senate committee approves quick divorces despite NCD opposition

(ANSA) - Rome, November 20 - Senators belonging to the New Centre Right (NCD) political party on Thursday continued to protest after the Senate's judiciary committee approved a bill allowing quick divorce in certain cases.
    The aim is for divorces to take 12 months in cases in which the split is contested and just six months when it is consensual.
    At the moment, couples must have been separated for at least three years before they can file for divorce.
    The bill also allows for quick divorce for childless couples, or those who have adult children.
    The bill, approved late Wednesday, was presented by the governing Democratic Party (PD), with some internal dissent, and some both PD and NCD members proposed amendments.
    Later, other members of the NCD called for clarification on elements of the bill which they called "extraordinarily sensitive".
    Some protested, calling it the "Las Vegas model", suggesting it would break up marriages too rapidly.
    The bill had been earlier approved by the Lower House where fear of undermining the rights of minors and the Italian social fabric prompted some dissent from within the PD.
    Justice Minister Andrea Orlando said the bill offers "a balanced approach".
    However, PD Senator Gianpiero Dalla Zuanna complained that an amendment shortening the separation period before divorce went too far. Related to this bill, a civil justice decree issued earlier this month said that divorces need not always go before a judge but in some cases can be settled before lawyers or a mayor, a measure designed to lighten the burden on Italy's infamously slow-moving justice system.
    A spokesman for Italian family lawyers previously hailed the bill as moving Italy in the right direction.
    "Now the fast-track divorce is virtually a reality. It is only missing the seal of the Senate, but the games have already been played," Gian Ettore Gassani, president of the Association of Italian Matrimony Lawyers, said in May when the bill cleared the Lower House.
    Grassani also urged further reform for unmarried and homosexual couples "because Italy remains the only one among major European countries to maintain an absolutely conservative family law, which many times is in contempt of fundamental human rights".