DIVORCE SPIN

My eyes were drawn to a story in the Telegraph today about MPs committing to divorce if they change political party. Whatever will they come up with next I wondered and then realised that the MPs in question are in Malaysia where they are all members of the Pan-Malaysia Islamic Party. Apparently they’ve taken a verbal oath not to transfer political allegiance and if they do to pay the penalty by divorcing their wives. The oath has drawn criticism from various quarters who believe (understandably) that it is trivialising marriage and according to Malaysia Women’s Minister “degrading and mean.”

However, Teresa Kok a lawmaker with the Democratic Action Party is reported as hailing the pledge as meaning that “they will not leave their party or their wives.” Funny, I thought marriage itself included a promise not to leave your wife and yet look how many men do! Leaving a political party as well can’t make life that much difficult surely. Call me a cynic, but maybe Malaysian politics are a bit like the British version with plenty of spin, not much substance and pre-election promises broken all over the place.

GRUMPY AND IMPERFECT

Have you ever considered your divorce lawyer to be negative minded? Does he or she keep telling you that you can’t do that which you wanted? In fact are there times when they seem downright grumpy? If so, you could have found the perfect person to advise you!

In its current edition, Australasian Science Magazine publishes an interview with Professor Joe Forgas from the University of South Wales in which he refers to details of his recent research showing that grumpy people cope with more demanding situations than happy ones because of the way their brains process information. It seems that critical or negative thinking people can actually be better at problem solving and make fewer mistakes than their sunnier natured counterparts; presumably this explains the personality traits of various occupations including lawyers. Hooray, there is a valid reason for my imperfections!

ONE KINGDOM; TWO SYSTEMS

When you live and practise in the North East of England, you are inevitably aware that only a matter of miles away across the border in Bonnie Scotland the law is very different. So tonight, Alasdair Loudon of Edinburgh law firm Turcan Connell treated Resolution’s Tees Valley Regional Group to an illuminating talk on divorce, Scottish style. How on earth can it be that we have one kingdom with two such different systems? The English system is of course deemed to be one of the most generous in the world for wives when it comes to financial settlements and hearing Alasdair talk I wondered if the Scottish one is amongst the tightest, when maintenance for a spouse is restricted to 3 years and the scope for taking needs into account is severely limited!

Why is it that here in England we are struggling to persuade Parliament to allow no fault divorce before a two year separation, whilst further North you can terminate your marriage after you have lived apart for one year (if you both consent) or after two years if you do not?

I wonder what the potential is for marriages to break down over arguments as mundane as “do we live in Jedburgh or Berwick; Gretna Green or Carlisle?” Moreover the one, who wins the argument, presumably also wins the financial settlement!

When everyday life gets too much for us, banks go bust, politicians lie and the price of petrol increases again, Outdoor Man frequently expresses a desire that we should opt for a more simple life aboard his boat. I’d always thought this was nothing more than a pipe dream, but listening to Alasdair tonight I realised that there could be method in his madness after all; Outdoor Man keeps his boat on the West Coast of Scotland!

BUSMAN'S HOLIDAY

I was on vacation last week. The trouble is that as regular readers of this blog will know I keep coming across divorce everywhere I turn, not just in the office. So it was that whilst I was wandering across a beach in out of season Cornwall, a complete stranger, dressed in a wetsuit and holding a surf board, looked at me and said: “It’s not working. We can’t communicate about anything important; in fact we can’t communicate at all.”

Maybe I have a sympathetic looking face, but the term “busman’s holiday” springs to mind!

WINNERS AND LOSERS

One of the pleasing touches I’ve invariably found in hotels in the Swiss and Austrian Alps is a newsletter on the breakfast table with a quote for the day. It is in such circumstances that I recently came across this offering by Denis Waitley, the American writer and motivational speaker. I believe it’s an entirely appropriate quote for a blog that seeks to delve into the complications of human relationships, though I make no comment on the accuracy or otherwise of the sentiments expressed:

Losers make promises they often break. Winners make commitments they always keep.

DEATH KNELL FOR FAMILY LEGAL AID

Latimer Hinks withdrew from legal aid work in 1998 and numerous other firms across the country have taken the same step. Resolution has warned that new fixed fees for family legal aid work published today by the Ministry of Justice are likely to mean a further exodus of lawyers from family legal aid and so undermine access to justice for ordinary families.

The new fees represent a further cut in legal aid remuneration at a time when family legal aid is already in crisis. The number of family legal aid practices in the country has dramatically dropped, from 4,500 in 2000 to 2,800 in 2006.

“The potential of these new fees to cause substantial and long term damage to the provision of family legal aid for separating families has been grossly underestimated,” said David Emmerson, Chair of Resolution’s Legal Aid Committee, strongly urging the government to reconsider the fees for private law cases before they come into effect in October 2010,

“Some of these fees represent a cut of more than 40 percent to hourly rates that have already remained static for the last ten years. Faced with this uneconomic scenario there is a very real danger that firms will walk away from legal aid work, further undermining access to justice.”

Lawyers estimate that for a very simple child contact case taking around 14 hours a legal aid firm would currently receive £960 on the basis of the hourly rate. The new fixed fee would be just £471 a cut of more than 50 percent.

Similarly a legal aid firm managing a straightforward divorce finance case which goes to full hearing, would be paid £2,106 at present; this will reduce to £1,299 under the new fixed fee regime, a cut of almost 40 percent.

BLOG ACTION DAY - CLIMATE CHANGE

That the climate is changing there appears to be no doubt. Scientists, however, seem divided as to the causes and also the solutions. As for politicians, without them would green or eco taxes have been invented? There seems to be an emerging policy to say that it’s to save the planet, in anticipation that everyone will pay without protest. I’m surprised they haven’t started to tax divorce, well not overtly anyway, although there is already VAT on the solicitor’s bill. Mind single parent families and relationship breakdowns are like gas guzzlers, only a thousand times worse, the multitude of sins they get blamed for. Come to think of it how long will it be before someone tries to make a connection between the rising number of divorces and global warming? There must be a scientific model somewhere, showing a correlation.

HOW TO STOP HATING YOUR EX

Stop hating your ex must sound like a tall order for many people, but this book by René Ashton seeks to show you how. “I wanted someone to tell me how in the world I was to escape the grips of this ferocious animal wreaking havoc in my life,” she writes; she’s not describing her ex, however, but instead her anger.

René forwarded me a copy of the book in advance of its US publication date last week. I’m sure that it will only be a matter of time before it’s available in the UK too. More like a work-book than a reference source, it’s written in a very down to earth style and pushes the reader onward in a mission of self-healing asking for deliberated responses to questions posed, even providing lined pages for the replies.

“You cannot change your ex. Try as you may. Manipulate as you may. Punish, kick, scream, whatever your tactic, it won’t work”, she reminds us. “The only thing you can change is yourself to make things different.” Through the book, she endeavours to train the reader how to let go and draws on her own experience in illustrating the depths to which the broken hearted and wronged can sink but also how they can move on.

René clearly feels strongly that children should have the right to be co-parented properly. She spares no punches when she identifies those careless or vindictive comments that can cause untold harm and urges the reader to “talk to a professional (not your kids), unload on your friends (not your kids).”

If you feel caught in a trap of negativity or denial as a result of relationship breakdown, it could help but you mustn’t expect any sympathy. “You have the capacity to change,” and that’s what the author wants you to do.

AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT

John Cleese kicked off his “How to Finance Your Divorce Tour” in Norway last weekend. He’s reported as telling his audience that he’d fallen on hard times because he had been ordered to pay $20 million to a woman he believed to be “the special love child of Bernie Madoff and Heather Mills.” Ouch! Divorce can have a tendency to bring out the bitter side of people as well as their ingenuity when they look to raise the necessary finances.

It all reminded me of once upon a time when I acted for a client whom I shall kindly describe as totally eccentric.

“You can call me Mr Praline,” he said when we first met, after he’d stepped across my room in three long and exaggerated strides, bowler hat perched precariously on the top of his head. He was a strange client; not easy to take instructions from when every few seconds he’d change the subject and yell out: “And now for something completely different.”

He was very fond of pets, I recall, with a fish called Wanda (or was it Eric?) and a large snake he referred to as Monty.

When settlement terms were ordered by the court, he completely broke down, banging a dead parrot on the desk and claiming to have to go back and live in a cardboard box. However, he paid what was required with borrowed funds, and then decamped to work as a lumberjack to pay for it all!

THE TENANT OF WILDFELL HALL

This novel by Anne Bronte was the token classic in my summer reading list. If there was ever a story that demonstrated the inequalities that used to exist between the sexes this is it. It’s set in the early part of the 19th Century when it definitely wasn’t considered acceptable for a husband to binge-drink and form sexual liaisons with other women, but some did anyway. Whilst divorce is actually mentioned once, it wasn’t really an option and nor was running away easy when your husband controlled all your finances and you’d promised to love, honour and obey him before an all-knowing God.

Even without a divorce though the story has a happy ending, or at least it does for the wife. The husband however dies from his excesses with a conviction that an angelic hereafter is not to be his destiny.

There are times when you realise just how much society has changed in the last 200 years and yet also how little.