London - The secret online vices of spouses are to blame for breaking up a growing number of marriages, lawyers said.
Bad habits facilitated by the web, including gambling and watching pornography, are emerging more often during divorce cases as reasons why couples separate.
Other factors include how easy it is to buy alcohol to drink at home and get credit to overspend on clothes and other goods.
According to the analysis by lawyers at JMW Solicitors, based in Manchester, these hidden vices may be the reason for up to one in ten divorces.
Harmful addictions tend to surface if couples start to bicker over how to divide their property and care for their children.
Gianna Lisiecki-Cunane, from JMW, said: “Access to the internet is so available that people can bet, watch porn or shop in what they believe is relative secrecy compared to only a decade or so ago.
“It can prove impossible to keep such misdemeanours under wraps and that’s often the point at which a marriage unravels.
“Even though that unreasonable behaviour might have been the main factor for the break-up, it rarely emerges at the start of a divorce. Sometimes, that’s because a spouse is ashamed to say what their husband or wife might have got up to.”
She added that ‘the merest mention of any bad habits’ can destroy any hope of an amicable split.
Harry Benson, of the Marriage Foundation, said: “It is often not the vice but the attempt to hide it that causes problems.”
Divorces not based on time living apart are granted due to adultery, desertion or unreasonable behaviour, a category which often includes drunkenness, drug abuse or problems with money. This reason has been on the rise, more often cited by wives, while adultery has been blamed less often.
Daily Mail