The Green MP for Rhône, Marie-Charlotte Garin, at the Assemblée Nationale, Paris, January 29, 2025. STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP
By the end of January, the Assemblée Nationale is set to review a bill seeking to end the so-called "marital duty," and will thus bring an end to an outdated requirement. While this term does not appear in the Civil Code, a legal gray area still surrounds the idea that spouses – especially wives – are obliged to have regular sexual relations. In an effort to clarify the issue, Marie-Charlotte Garin, Green MP for Rhône, and Paul Christophe, president of the Horizons group, submitted a bill in early December 2025 to "ensure that consent remains the primary condition for any sexual act, including within marriage."
The bill, co-signed by 136 lawmakers across the political spectrum – from the right to the French Communist Party – proposes, among other things, an addition to Article 215 of the Civil Code, which currently states that spouses "are mutually obliged to a shared life." "Many people still wrongly believe that a shared life means sharing a bed," said Garin. With the proposed legislation, the article would clarify that this shared life "creates no obligation for spouses to have sexual relations."
