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Dear Our Lawyer,
I should like a divorce, but I cannot prove anything against my husband, I
am just sick of his face looking at me from behind things. What do I need to
prove my marriage has broken down irretrievably?
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What you need to prove your marriage has broken down irretrievably is a
lawyer. The changes in the Divorce Laws were brought about expressly to make
these unsavoury matters easier for lawyers who, in the bad old days, often
spent years listening to appalling old ratbags going on about their spouses.
Frequently, we ourselves had to go to the bother of appointing private
detectives charged with invading cherished privacy, or actually find
unscrupulous women prepared to spend the night in tatty hotels with clients to
enable us to cobble together bogus misconduct charges. Sometimes, even, we
had to go to the repulsive lengths of taking incriminating photographs of
decent human beings who wanted nothing more than to get their leg across in
peace and quiet. Needless to say, all this filled the legal profession with
disgust; there is nothing worse than watching unqualified people --
photographers, security men, hotel staff -- cleaning up, when the rest of us
have spent years studying for smart diplomas. If I had my time over again, I
used to think, I'd buy a Polaroid camera and an old macintosh, and bugger
sitting around in pinstripe trousers: to this day, I have never seen anyone
else Doing It, and probably never shall, now.
Fortunately, the new divorce procedures have changed all that. To put the
complex legal niceties into a nutshell for the layman, what the latest
legislation means is that we get it all, and that we get it quickly. We do
not have to listen to long boring stories about how he gets drunk and hits you
with the bedside table, we do not have to interview dreary filing clerks that
he has knocked up, we do not have to spread the jam around to private eyes and
short-contract tarts and chamberpersons; all that we require is one piece of
paper from you saying you are sick and tired of his face looking at you from
behind things, plus several more pieces of paper saying I Promise To Pay The
Bearer Twenty Pounds, and we shall do the rest.