The National Assembly of France unanimously voted to abolish the so-called "marital duty." The deputies thus eliminated the ambiguity that had prevailed in the Civil Code until now. The next step is a vote in the Senate, the upper house of parliament.
As reported by Radio France Internationale, the authors of the bill, Marie-Charlotte Garin ("the Greens") and Paul Christophe (chairman of the center-right "Horizons" faction), who introduced it to parliament in December, hope for the law to come into effect "before summer."
Although the term "marital duty" is not directly mentioned in the Civil Code, there remains legal uncertainty surrounding this concept, fueling the idea that spouses are allegedly "obliged" to engage in sexual relations regularly.
This widely held notion of "obligation" leads to many difficult situations, including the justification of "marital" rapes.
"By maintaining such an 'obligation' in our law, we have collectively condoned a system of dominance, a system of the husband’s predation on the wife," stated MP Marie-Charlotte Garin. "We must change the law so that this concept can never again exist in law or in people's consciousness."
The new law proposes an amendment to Article 215 of the French Civil Code, which states that spouses "mutually undertake to live together." "Until now, many mistakenly believe that living together is equivalent to sharing a bed," lamented Marie-Charlotte Garin.
According to the bill, the concept of "marital duty" contradicts, on one hand, the right to freely dispose of one’s body, and on the other, sexual freedom, that is, the right to consent to any sexual relations without any form of coercion.
As AFP clarifies, despite the absence of "marital duty" in the Civil Code, case law has nevertheless sometimes equated cohabitation with "sharing a bed."
For instance, in 2019, a man obtained a divorce on the grounds of his wife’s "fault" because she had not engaged in sexual relations with him for many years. The Versailles Court of Appeal noted the "constant refusal of the wife, starting from 2004, to have intimate relations with her husband" and stated that this constituted "a serious and repeated violation of the duties and obligations of marriage, making the continuation of cohabitation unbearable" (the couple had been married since 1984). A year later, a 69-year-old woman unsuccessfully filed a cassation appeal, after which she turned to the European Court of Human Rights.
On January 23, 2025, the ECHR condemned France in this case, deeming the use of the "concept" of "marital duty" unlawful.
