French MPs vote to end ‘marital duty’: what new law changes on sex and consent
If adopted, the new law will establish that ‘marriage is not sexual servitude’
The law on marital duty and sexual rights within marriage will now be sent to the Senate
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French MPs have voted to end the legal concept of ‘marital duty’, with a new law that states that marriage “creates no [sexual] obligation” between spouses, and outlaws divorce based on ‘marital duty’.
The Assemblée Nationale voted the law through unanimously on January 28. It will now be sent for examination in the Senate. If adopted there without amendment, it should become law by the summer.
If adopted the text would change the Code civil. It would:
‘Devoir marital’ does not explicitly exist in French law, but the existing wording of articles in the Code civil (see table below) is often used to justify it, and divorces have been granted on this basis (see examples below).
“I would like to spare a thought for all the women who have been forced into this situation, who have suffered marital rape,” said MP Marie-Charlotte Garin, co-author of the bill and Ecologiste party member, after the vote. “We are counting on this text to be a starting point, so that all this can finally come to an end.”
The bill’s other co-author was Horizons MP Paul Christophe.
Article clarification
The text adds to two existing articles in the Code civil to make them clearer. These are:
The authors of the text sought to establish three principles:
Marriage is not “sexual servitude”
Consent to marriage does not constitute “consent to future sexual relations”
The refusal to have sexual relations “does not constitute a violation of any duty between spouses”.
Ms Garin and Mr Christophe stated that the previous law was not clear enough, and effectively “legalised the act of having sex under duress – in this case, under the threat of divorce”.
The new law would require registrars to read out a statement, during a wedding, that ‘community of life’ does not “create any obligation for spouses to have sexual relations”.
Marital duty divorce
This ‘threat of divorce’ is not hypothetical; it has recent precedent.
In 2019, a couple was granted a divorce based on the woman’s "continuous refusal…to have intimate relations with her husband”. The woman challenged the decision and took the case to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). The ECHR ruled in her favour, and set a precedent for this change in French law.
In rare cases, the existing law discriminates against men, too. In 2017, a man in Aix-en-Provence was fined €10,000 in damages for “lack of sexual relations” with his wife. The court found that this constituted a violation of ‘marital duty’.
Civil and criminal law
Ms Garin and Mr Christophe added that the new bill would also “bring French law into line with European convention requirements”, and ensure that civil and criminal law is aligned.
In 2006, marital rape was criminalised in 2006, and in 2025, the law introduced the idea of consent into the criminal definition of rape.
Magistate union l’Union Syndicale des Magistrats added that it would have been “difficult to justify” the maintenance of an “implicit sexual obligation in civil law”, when “marital rape is punishable by criminal law”.
Rape within couples accounts for more than 60% of all marital violence reported by adult women in couples to the police or gendarmerie in France, states the national violence against women observatory l'Observatoire national des violences faites aux femmes.
