As Nordic National going through a divorce here, I am flabbergasted at the nasty and adversarial process that passes for being “family law” in this jurisdiction. Without firm standards and rules (beyond inappropriate precedents substantially set by big money cases), the family “industry” has an open field to create animosity and hatred between man and wife, father and mother to “milk the case and the family savings. Based my personal experience and every case I come across amongst my colleagues and friends, that is precisely what happens.

What you perceive as the “shouting of the most aggrieved” is in reality, I strongly suspect, only the tip of the iceberg. Most people do not speak out but suffer in silence (as indeed they are required to under the Kafkaesque secrecy rules which are there for the protection of the courts and the industry, certainly not the children). Everybody I have spoken to who experienced English family proceedings (includes divorce, custody and adoption cases) have very serious grievances. However, without exception this experience is so draining that people just want to move on once it finally is over.

Furthermore, I think that people in the UK simply do not appreciate that it need not be like this. Whilst complex cases (such as adoption) always will require court involvement and judgemental discretion, normal middle class divorces do not. You need look no further than the Denmark or Norway to see a Family Law system that promotes quick resolution in most cases without the involvement of the courts and the squandering of family savings. If custody issues started from a presumption of shared parenting (as opposed to tender years’ doctrine which belongs in the 1950s), if assets were divided according to firm rules (as opposed to making the matrimonial home a “trump card” in the battle), if both child and maintenance payments were set according to firm rules, then the scope of lawyers to make a financial meal out of a family’s misery would be much reduced. Forget the money, the assets and all that. What matters most to any child going through divorce is that mum and dad continue to cooperate about the children.

How anybody can believe that subjecting families to a litigious and adversarial process benefits the children is beyond comprehension. There is a massive conflict of interest in the midst of UK family proceedings and as a collective the family legal industry richly deserves its poor reputation.