Perhaps the lasting achievement of my mother, Audrey Maxwell-Timmins, who has died aged 101, was the part she played in the creation in 1983 of Broken Rites, which campaigns for the rights of those abandoned when clergy marriages go wrong.
Her involvement followed her personal experience of the way the Methodist church struggled to help when she and my father separated in the 1970s. As a result of the group’s campaigning, churches of various denominations now provide better support to spouses when marriages break down, including in helping to find housing and working out pension-sharing arrangements.
