Normally, to divorce a person or dissolve a civil union, people need to prove they've been living apart from their ex-partner for two years.

A member's bill by Labour MP Angie-Warren Clark, logged in July last year, hoped to change that by removing the two-year requirement for survivors of domestic violence where there's a conviction or final protection order against their former partners.

The bill had not yet been introduced in Parliament because it hadn't yet been pulled out of the member's bill ballot, nor had it received enough support from MPs who weren't Ministers. It only needed five more names after getting the support of all Labour MPs who aren't Ministers, the Green Party and ACT.

On Thursday, National told 1News they would be supporting the bill. National's Chris Bishop also offered to co-sponsor Warren-Clark's bill - should this offer be accepted, National will support the fast-tracking of it, allowing it to jump the requirement to be pulled from the ballot.

"Everyone deserves to live a life free of violence and all people should have the right to feel safe in a relationship and to leave that relationship if they experience family violence."

"Chris Bishop has previously done work on this issue, including drafting his own member’s bill and accepting a petition shortly before Angie Warren-Clark put her Bill in the ballot," a spokesperson said. "Given this background, National supports the bill."

Should National put their names to the bill - it would make it the first member's bill to be introduced in Parliament after a rule change in 2020 that allowed them to bypass the ballot if it has the support of 61 MPs who aren't Ministers. Before the change, some of those bills have had to wait years to be pulled out of a biscuit tin for Parliament's consideration, if they ever get picked at all.

In an interview on Wednesday to 1News, Warren-Clark said Te Pāti Māori had also supported the bill in principle and were in the process of filling in the necessary paperwork.

The bill aims "to reduce the harm that family violence causes in New Zealand by allowing a party to a marriage or civil union to apply for an order dissolving a marriage or civil union if they have been the victim of family violence inflicted by the other party".

"Everyone deserves to live a life free of violence and all people should have the right to feel safe in a relationship and to leave that relationship if they experience family violence."

Before becoming an MP in 2017, Warren-Clark was the manager at Tauranga Women's Refuge. She said she'd worked with women who faced ongoing abuse and violence as a consequence of having to wait that time.

The change in the law would make a big difference to the safety of survivors, she said.

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"It means you can be free of that violence without having that perpetuation of violence continue over the two years while you are waiting for this process of being completely and legally divorced from someone."

As for why she wanted to change divorce legislation through a member's bill, rather than a Government bill, she said the laws around marriage and family court proceedings needed to be looked at more broadly.

"Member's bills are just little, discrete pieces of change - they're significant in their own way, but they don't fundamentally change the way we do things.

"Constitutionally, changing something like the automatic two-year wait for marriage needs to be looked at fully and thoroughly. This little carve-out just enables some real safety enhancements for those families."

A petition asking for the law change was presented to Parliament in June last year.

"Abuse is about power and control. I strongly believe that the laws stating I must be separated for two years before my marriage can be dissolved have allowed many occasions of power and control," petitioner Ashley Jones said.

"It feels like the system has allowed him to abuse me further. We as a country pride ourselves on being anti-domestic violence, yet I feel our laws are allowing it… other countries have made change; it's our turn now."