Description: It is a mistake to think of divorce as the death of a marriage: it isn't. It is the burial of a marriage that is already dead.

England's high divorce rate doesn't necessarily mean more broken marriages than elsewhere - it means that rather than let a dead marriage fester English law gives it a decent burial. And there is life after divorce - the Court of Appeal have said so.

Divorce is a process in which family lawyers require different skills to their colleagues : they must take into account emotions, not just of their own client but of the family as a whole, particularly where children are involved. They must not forget former family members may have to deal with each other for years to come. A good family lawyer will encourage them to do so in a civilised manner.

In family work High Street solicitors have a clear advantage over their colleagues in firms more used to dealing with commercial clients. Local family solicitors can be more relaxed and face less pressure to put their profit-margins before their professional judgment.

There is only one ground for divorce in English Law. It is that the marriage has broken down irretrievably.

The current law is over 30 years old. It was a compromise between those who wanted divorce made more difficult and those who thought that giving a swift burial to a dead marriage would lead to an earlier return to happiness for all members of the family.

Currently, therefore, as well as showing the marriage has broken down, a person wanting a divorce has to show one or more of five so-called 'Facts'. Put briefly they are that the other person has committed adultery, behaved intolerably, deserted the person asking for the divorce for 2 or more years, lived apart from the person wanting the divorce for at least two years where the other person agrees to the divorce, or lived apart from the person wanting a divorce for 5 years or more. This is almost always a paper exercise taking something in the region of 5 months or so depending on the co-operation of the other person and the work-load of the Court.

Category: Ealing

Url: http://www.vickers-solicitors.co.uk/

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