Divorce Advocates

Dear Sir - Is it really conscionable to have all these divorce lawyers who seem to make a mountain out of a molehill in most of their cases and who positively conspire against the matrimonial bond itself most days? As Henry II once opined of an archbishop who meddled too much in state affairs - Who will rid us of these turbulent clerics sic or shall we say lawyers?

Charity forbids too negative a treatment of this Question, a question that came in from a sincere if somewhat exasperated believer going through a divorce and annulment from Spain near Montserrat, since lawyers are only doing a job and earning their daily crust too, just like everybody else; so a thankless task for the most part. Still, we might try to explain the current state of affairs with the refreshment of a little historical perspective on this subject: In the 1850s, chiefly as a result of the 1857 Matrimonial Causes Act and the 1857 Court of Probate Act, specialists called Doctors Commons who were experts in the minutiae and detail of the human relationship were taken out of the equations of divorce cases and the presidency of those cases was handed over to judges who had more experience judging property disposal cases, and what was the net effect? Well, one does not have to be a rocket science genius to work out what then happened, since one can simply imagine how divorces cases were subsequently run. But NB - All of us who participate in meaningful bi-partite relationships naturally seek out the happiness of the rapport itself, and if love has a relational definition, it is to seek out the happiness of the other party at all times as a constant good to be willed by the parties. But this is not always easy to do, and many couples, maybe 30%, do not have the christian maturity or psychological stamina to seek out the good in this way. Divorce then can occur. Yet it must be said by us, in tandem with the recent popes after John Paul II on this matter namely that - Divorce is a shipwreck for many couples. When it occurs or rather IF it occurs, there is always and everywhere some element of TRAUMA involved in such proceedings, since the children if there are children are genuinely stuck like suckling piglets by the experience - Mummy and Daddy fighting like cats and dogs.

According to the questioner, couples sometimes find that the specialised divorce lawyers that have arisen since the 1850s and the apportioning of matrimonial causes to property lawyers and the jurisprudence arising tend to side with one side or the other and instead of seeking out the good of the couple in an objective dispassionate way, they identify with one or other of the parties involved. Also it seems to be the case that divorce lawyers sometimes sow rancour between the couple quite coolly and deliberately, chiefly by souring the atmosphere between the once happy couple and by animating property disputes between them. So divorces might begin from the point of view of relief, relief that something can be done finally about the arguments, but they quickly decline and decay and degenerate into acrimonious dispute. Alimony payments also become the source of much dispute. The new era property divorce lawyers seem to love splitting up couples rather than trying to get them to reconcile. So desperate has this aspect become that only recently in the last 5 years has the Govt teams invited lawyers to seek out reconciliation as a first call and first base option in divorce cases of matrimonial breakdown, a late but important brake on the rapidity of such proceedings. Even recently as 2 years ago, Govt teams have sought to emulate the church tribunals and begun to seek non fault proceedings as standard - that is a testimony to the success of the Annulment lawyers of the churches. Doctors Commons could have resolved all of these unfortunate issues in their time, if they had not been abolished and their Tribunal demolished at London.

True, even church lawyers involved in Annulment procedures sometimes, through no fault of their own, guided by the Zeitgeist of the Age, do take sides, it must be said and acknowledged, though Annulment lawyers are specialists in the inner dynamics of human rapports, and are meant to do something quite unique to the older church process of the Doctors Commons Era, seek out the judgement PRO REI VERITATE, concerning the truth of the matter, not apportioning blame to either party for the particular breakdown of the relationship but rather to seek out the objective issue of the BOND itself as an independent factor that stands above the personal likes and dislikes of the couple concerned. The BOND, the BOND, the BOND - as something enjoying Selbstandigkeit or Self Standing in a rapport.

Somewhat akin to the thinker on Renegade dot Inc on RT, with Ross Ashcroft, no matter how rich you are, you cannot escape climate change issues, even nowadays more and more detached observers stand back in amazement and watch many rich people and popstars de facto actively seeking ways to escape the problems of the climate and of global warming chiefly through escaping to the Seychelles and Mauritius via private executive planes - the world is agog with such selfishness and escapism. So too with divorce, it is possible to try the escape button in a divorce case, but sometimes the couples concerned might like to seek out a judgement not on the merits of the case and the apportioning of blame to one or other side, something that the Annulment lawyer pro-actively prescinds from entering into, but to find out objectively if the couple freely and deliberately and maturely chose the objective Bond at their disposal at the time of the wedding itself or whether they were motivated by more private hidden meanings and psychological factors that impaired their judgement at the time - what is called a Lack of Due Discretion by Annulment lawyers, though this is not the only ground for an Annulment - there are as many grounds for Annulment as there are definitions of marriage to work with in such cases - couples have plenty of grounds to choose from in theory and especially in Rome at the Sacred Roman Rota if they appeal there. The Annulment lawyers have perfected the art of Annulment to a fine art, and these should be allowed some of the more acrimonious sides of the divorce spectrum of cases maybe. At least they would be objective. They would actively work toward a judgement PRO REI VERITATE, for the truth of the matter itself, and so help each of the parties to a case to arrive at different results - in sum they would help a couple assess themselves objectively as contributors to the divorce breakdown of the rapport. In sum they would help a couple in a divorce case to become mature actors and parties showing forth a greater human maturity to such relationships. In sum, they would help couples understand that it is not the kids or the car or the house that is the source and font, the origin and zenith of the human relationship but the consent of the parties themselves, and that this consent needs to be analysed in depth in most divorce cases. Amen to that.