Divorced men are being forced to use soup kitchens and sleep rough by high support payments

Divorced men are being put up in hostels to save them from sleeping on the streets after being thrown out of their homes and forced into poverty by tough settlements.

The latest accommodation aimed at “the new poor” was opened in Tor San Lorenzo, near Rome, this week by the Catholic Church. Gian Ettore Gassani, president of the Italian association of matrimonial lawyers, said: “There are four million separated men in Italy and a million of them are going hungry. Divorce can mean dying here.”

Divorce courts award seven in ten wives the family house in which to continue raising children. In 94 per cent of cases they also order the husbands to pay support and the mortgage — which for many amounts to half