The health and wellbeing of society and all its members, especially children, depends on the existence of strong and stable families. Yet the most authoritative accounts of the current condition of family life in Britain today paint an alarming picture. Sir Paul Coleridge, former High Court judge in the family division and now chairman of the Marriage Foundation, has pointed out that “by the age of 15 almost half our children are no longer living with both their birth parents …” In Sir Paul’s opinion the state itself bears a heavy responsibility for this, by refusing to repair a broken legal framework for marriage that is no longer fit for purpose.