The Constitutional Court’s new ruling in Nicholas Opio & Ors v Attorney General has sent ripples throughout Uganda’s bedrooms, boardrooms, and quite frankly, village rumor. For the first time, judges spoke what many suffering couples mutter under their breath: you don’t need to prove your wife is a cheating scoundrel, a savage thug, or a deserter who took the goat and the boda you just need to say, “I no longer consent,” and the marriage legally disintegrates. In short, Uganda just fell into the era of no-fault divorce, and the combined sigh of relief is just about visible except, of course, from in-laws.

The reasoning of the Court is persuasively simple: marriage is based on free will, and if that free will is gone, the Constitution itself commands that the marriage is no longer. Why hang on to individuals when one is already gone in the head, emotionally missing, and bunking with the kids? For centuries, the law insisted on guilt: adultery, cruelty, desertion. You had to reveal the most shameful moments of your existence in open court, typically with the neighbors in the gallery and a clerk who no doubt was brought up in the same parish. The ruling rightly referred to this circus as humiliating, traumatic, and we dare say, un-African because in Africa, you don’t have family business with strangers, you share it with your auntie on millet porridge.

At a human level, the ruling makes sense. Everyone has seen divorces drag on for years as spouses employ children, assets, and even dogs as weapons. It’s like watching a telenovela except that the stars are your friends and cousins. Why on earth would any person be legally kept in a marriage when their contract cleared the building years ago, with in most instances the WhatsApp messages of another person? On that basis, the Court’s decision is freedom. It is an understanding that human dignity is not having to bring your wounds in for sanction in order to leave a relationship already in effect amounting to solitary confinement.

Things, however, become muddy here. The Court’s reading of Article 31(3) that not only is there required consent at the altar but that it also has to animate the marriage day by day reduces marriage to a matter equal to a tenancy agreement. Monthly renewal, such as UMEME Yaka units, springs to mind: the instant the light goes out, the marriage is in darkness. One can only say on the one hand, that’s refreshingly frank. On the other hand, it distills marriage down to something as fleeting as a Netflix subscription cancel at will, no reason required.

And then there is the small problem of children. The judgment correctly ridiculed suggestions of protecting families, explaining that an unclosed home isn’t a great place to raise kids. For once, no child will thrive in a home where mum and dad are co-parents in name but sworn enemies in practice. However, one can’t help but speculate whether the Court has underplayed the social backlash: Ugandan aunties are already polishing off their “In our times we endured” speeches, and priests are certainly rehashing homilies on “till death us do part.”

And then there’s Parliament. Legislators have shied away from amending marriage laws for decades, shelving bills after months of protracted debate about culture, religion, and “protection of the African family.” And now the Court has swept aside, leaving us with no-fault divorce sans a solitary village baraza. The irony? Judges who don wigs imported from Britain might have just done something even more revolutionary than Uganda’s politicians. Whether you embrace this as progress or lament it as judicial activism depends on how much you currently like your spouse.

Finally, the ruling is broad, merciful, and frankly overdue. It frees people from random legal hoops and understands that consent is not an episodic vow but a continuing, breathing state. However, it promises to reduce marriage to the status of a matatu journey—you can alight whenever the conductor annoys you. But perhaps that is exactly the problem: if love is deceased, why should the law be undertaker? For Ugandans experiencing marriages joyful and torturous, the message of the Court is plain: you do not need to prove why you’re done, you simply need to intend so. And maybe that’s the most honest legal doctrine we’ve had in years.