A Frenchman has been ordered to pay his ex-wife £8,500 in damages for failing to have enough sex with her during their marriage.
The man, named as Jean-Louis B., neglected his matrimonial duties to wife, Monique, in Nice, who sued him and took her divorce case to an Appeal Court.
The court in Aix-en-Provence heard that the couple were married for 21 years and raised two children on the French Riviera.
The wife blamed the break-up of their on her reluctant husband’s lack of activity in the bedroom and for failing to make love to her.
But the strains of work and illness prevented Jean-Louis from fulfilling his matrimonial duties, his advocate pleaded.
The 51-year-old Frenchman was fined under Article 215 of France’s Civil Code, which states that married couples must agree to a “shared communal life”.
A 2011 report by UK-based The Telegraph and Daily Mail, stated that a judge ruled that the law implies that “sexual relations must form part of a marriage.”
The rare legal decision came after the wife filed for divorce in 2009, blaming the break-up on her husband’s lack of activity in the bedroom.
A judge in Nice, Southern France, had then granted the divorce and ruled the Frenchman was solely responsible for the split.
But the then 47-year-old ex-wife took the Frenchman back to court in 2011, demanding 10,000 euros in compensation for “lack of sex over 21 years of marriage”.
The ex-husband claimed that “tiredness and health problems” prevented him from being more attentive between the sheets.
Representatives for the unidentified Frenchman at the Appeal Court in Aix-en-Provence said the stresses of work took their toll on the couple’s sex life.
But a judge in the south of France’s highest court in Aix-en-Provence ruled in favour of the wife.
The judge quoted the French Civil and Penal Code, which requires both parties in a marriage to respect ‘lifelong community’ requiring them by law to have sexual relations.
“A sexual relationship between husband and wife is the expression of affection they have for each other, and in this case it was absent.
“By getting married, couples agree to sharing their life and this clearly implies they will have sex with each other,” the judge had ruled.
Sexual abstinence in a couple, together with violence and infidelity, are cited regularly in hundreds of divorce claims in France.
But it is extremely rare for a husband or wife to pay financial damages for specifically failing to satisfy sexually.
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The last similar case in France dates back to the year 2000.
In recent years, the traditional image of the French lover par excellence has taken a battering from statistics.
The country that put the ‘French’ in front of kiss and purports to speak ‘la langue de l’amour’ is in the process of losing its libido, it would seem.
A survey by the French Institute of Public Opinion questioned 1,000 adults and found that 76 per cent of them suffer relationship problems due to a poor sex life.
Half of those also polled said they had ‘no desire’ to make love.
More than a third of French women confessed to citing headaches, fatigue or ‘not in front of the children’ as excuses for saying no. One in six men admitted similar excuses.
Figures show that one in three traditional French marriages ends in divorce.
Growing numbers of French couples are opting for civil solidarity pacts known as PACS.
PACS, contractual agreements also available to same sex partners, were introduced by the government of Lionel Jospin in 1999.
They were signed by 700,000 couples during the first 10 years of the legal arrangement.
The new deal has become so popular in France that the expression ‘être pacsé’ is used as often as ‘être marié’ to mean ‘having tied the knot’.
•Sources: https://www dailymail.co.uk; http://www.telegraph.co.uk
