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A man who was married to his partner for less than one year has been granted a divorce by the Australian family courts following the presiding judge having declared that he had been “under duress” when agreeing to wed and subsequently marrying his partner. Reports have indicated that the unnamed couple had been engaged in an on-off relationship for six years prior to their engagement and that the man had previously told his girlfriend that he wanted to separate. In response to this, the woman informed him that she was pregnant with his child and that she would not terminate the pregnancy unless he agreed to marry her. The couple wed two months later. When applying for divorce, the man referred to a section of the Australian marriage act which states that a union is void unless both parties freely consent to the marriage, claiming that he felt that he had to marry the woman in question in order to ensure that she terminated the pregnancy. The man further informed the courts that he would not have married the woman in different circumstances and that neither party had informed their parents of the marriage. The man’s ex-partner declined the opportunity to provide evidence at the hearing and Justice Peter Rose declared: "With some hesitation, I have concluded duress has been established by the husband due to the unchallenged facts which led to him entering into the marriage." Recent statistics have shown that one in every three Australian marriages end in divorce, though the divorce rate has fallen steadily in recent times following the country’s divorce rate having peaked in 2001.