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