Divorce with Dignity

Katie Price and Peter Andre

How interesting that they wanted to live their life in the spotlight and get paid exceedingly well when they were able to show a public face of "all is well".

Yet now that things have turned a corner and there are some rifts showing they are unwilling at the present to share with their paying public how they deal with difficulties, and work through them.

It is possible that a marriage lived in such publicity would be doomed to failure in any case, but there are many people who have believed that from the beginning it was a publicity deal and a money spinner.

However separation and divorce, whatever the circumstances of the marriage is a time when emotions are at the surface and feelings can easily be damaged, so if they are able to conduct a civilized separation and stay out of the public eye and be generous and caring about how they progress then it could be a good model for many other people.

Perhaps their adoring public will not be satisified with dignity and will want to see them dishing the dirt and tearing each other apart and get paid exceedingly well for that as well.

My hope is that they do stick with their word and keep their separation as private as they made their marriage public.

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Judgement Day for the McCartney's

Gossip and speculation, this judgement will have an impact on short marriages.  Yet my question continues to be, "How will the judgement on this high profile, high finance marriage affect the majority of people"

After 4 years of marriage the majority of us will leave that marriage, with half of what has been created together, and often that is very little, as I keep saying to people, divorce is very expensive and most people are financially worse off after a divorce than when living together.

The legal eagles seem to be saying, this is a test case for future reference, but for the majority of us this settlement will have no impact at all.

However as many of us are entering second and or even third marriages and may have created a level of security and wealth prior to marriage, this judgement could have an impact on, what part of previous wealth can be taken into account when divorcing.

I have worked with several couples who have lost out on finances that were created before the marriage took place, and this has created a lot of acrimony and anger.

For me the question is should a short marriage be so profitable for anyone who has not been a part of creating that wealth. How can people protect what they have established and feel free to marry, knowing that they will not loose financially.

Divorce has become such a common occurrence that there has to be some sense of the financial settlement people will receive based on the length of time it has been in place and dare I say it have some recognition of what people bring into the marriage.

Not a romantic idea I understand, however I worked with someone who married for the second time later in life and divorced after 5 years and one son and she got half of his accumulated wealth, half of his pension, he had been a civil servant for all his working life and at 59 she also got half of his retirement funds, so after early retirement had to start a new life with very little.  He has to pay maintenance until his son has finished education, by which time he will be roughly 82.

Needless to say he is very angry at the unfairness of this situation, and feels that he has nothing to show for his life of hard work, yet his younger ex wife has more than him and will be able to establish herself again.

Not a wealthy man to start with he is now on the breadline.

The divorce laws need to reviewed to make more fair and balanced decisions. Most of us know people who have been treated very badly by the legal system.

£100, better off for couples living apart...

As of this is an incentive for couples to decide to divorce.  Most couples have tremendous financial difficulties when they divorce, and it is unlikely that £100 will be the deciding factor.

Divorce, often creates lack of financial security, on top of uncontrollable emotions. The divorcing  couple often fail to address the financial issue until after they have already separated.

I recently worked with a woman who was left by her husband, he earns vast amounts of money as a lawyer, but they lived a lavish lifestyle and have a huge mortgage and constant overspending there is little known savings or investments.

With three children to support, and being a stay at home wife and mum, she is now 51 and her future does not look very secure.

She has to deal with the abandonment and betrayal by her husband, he just walked out one day without any warning, says there is no one else, and leaves her with having to move from her home, live on very little money,  as they are greatly in debt, living on the belief that they would always be secure financially.

Yes, I can see her rushing for divorce because she will be £100 better off.

Most couples do not have such a vast income or savings and investments, that they are better off once divorced. Yes of course there are some, particularly if one the couple "married well", and the marriage took them from a place of minimal income to a better life style, as in the McCartney vs Mills, she could never have made that much money in a lifetime working a regular job. But that is the exception rather than the rule.

Ashley and Cheryl Cole - Infidelity and trust!

Is it ever possible to repair trust once it has been betrayed, especially so publicly? It is hard to say, I do know that couples can work through betrayal and infidelity when both realise that there has been a mistake and are committed to making sure it never happens again.

They need to be prepared to put themself in a position of scrutiny and questioning until the betrayed partner has managed to gain a new level of trust, unfortunately many people are unwilling to do the work they need to do to make the repair fully.

Taking someone who is in the public domain, a young couple who have more than the usual number of temptations being handed to them on a plate minute by minute, and I wonder how hard it would be for the trust to be restored.  Perhaps the stakes are too high for them both.

All I can offer is the following piece of advice, if you both are able to be completely honest about what and how it happened, no hidden pieces or lies to cover up the event, if you are both willing to take the pain of building trust no matter what the betrayed person needs to do to make that happen and if you are both willing together and separately to get some professional help them maybe, just maybe your marriage will have an opportunity to flourish and be successful and happiness and peace will be restored.

Are they up for that, well who knows.

Mistresses

I watched this programme all the way through for the first time last night, as in the early stages I felt that I did not want to watch a programme that normalised affairs in which people took the choice to easily break their committments and agreements with each other.

Having watched the program I had some emotional responses to the depth of love that people felt for each other despite some of the things they were going through.  In particular the big heart of Siobhan's husband who was willing to give his wife a second chance, and do his utmost to forgive her and move on.

How easy to show love conquering all in a programme and how hard it often is in real life.

WE CAN WORK IT OUT!

It appears they can't, the Paul and Heather saga continues and may well do so for several days, weeks or months to come.

This clearly is not only a battle about money, if it was then I am sure Paul would have paid up the 100 million or so that Heather is likely to want. A mere month's interest on his vast fortune.

This is about control and still wanting to come out of the divorce feeling that self respect is in tact.  Heather probably feels that her dirty laundry has been aired in public and may well feel really restricted that she is unable to dish the same kind of dirt.

If this is all about a gagging order rather than money, does the law have a right to  make a decision about what can be said and what cannot.  After all is Paul is a miserly skinflint who is likely to get a little bit rough when under the influence of alcohol what is the problem with the world knowing that.

What is the blue eyed boy really afraid we will find out about him and his behaviour.

Can divorcing couples ever feel it is fair?

I am quite sure that each person in a divorce will feel that the other has come off better financially.  What most divorcing couples fail to really deal with, is that the financial pot that now needs to be shared into two, is the same pot that provided well for them when it was intact.

The difficulty is that people have needs and wants and feel that they should live in divorce, with the same life style they had during marriage.  Few people have such a big pot that they are fighting over millions, it is more likely thousands.

Often the person who instigates the divorce, especially if there is someone else involved, will be less likely to fight for an equal share as their guilt will play a part. However in situations like this the  betrayed partner often becomes quite malicious thus sparking a battle.

Money and possessions become the weapon that is used to punish the other person and often for many years.  Many breadwinners have to pay support to their spouse for a number of years or even a lifetime, often making it impossible for them to move on with their lives, as they are under so much financial strain irrespective of whether they initiated the divorce or not.

New partners income can also be taken into account and this definitely creates a situation of difficulty between this new ouple also.

It is this crippling burden that can destroy future relationships, create resentment between divorced couples and also the children can become involved.

Can divorce ever be fair, well I suspect that whoever you speak to, will be feeling that they have been left in a mess by the other, whether financial, emotional or physical as it is rare that two people from an adult place, make a decision to divorce and separate everything equally or fairly depending on their financial situation, it can happen and it does happen, but resentment and feelings of betrayal often get in the way of wisdom and generosity of spirit.

Forensic accountants and divorce!

The Mills vs McCartney fiasco continues with the help of a couple of forensic accountants. These accountants will look into the absolute detail of each of their financial business.

It appears that Heather thinks Paul has amassed more money since their marriage than he says he has made, so they will give all the details over to a forensic accountant who will rake through everything to gain advantage and support the case of each of them.

If you need a forensic account and solicitor to help with your divorce then you could contact Mike Gordon who is a forensic account and works jointly with his wife  Penny Raby who is a solicitor.

Mills vs McCartney Financial settlement

Most of us will never be in the financial position that this warring couple are in, yet the newspapers and television seem to be obsessed with the outcome.  I am interested in the sides that are being taken, those for Heather, which seem to me to be not so many as those in the Paul camp.  There has been an ongoing character assignation of Heather, and I think the press should really take some responsibility for behaving without dignity towards her.

Whether we like it or not in a divorce case sides will be taken and it seems to have less to do with what we perceive to be fare and just, from within the breaking up family, but more to do with our personal judgements about who we want to win or come off better.

It is much easier to blot the copy book of a woman than a man and this creates a lot of unfairness, who Heather was in the past has absolutely nothing to do with her divorce settlement.  After all I am sure there are some dark secrets in Paul's past that have never been pilloried in the press, like Heathers have.

Heather will probably always have a negative label attached to her, where as Paul will walk away with his reputation in tact.  What I would like to see is a judgement based on the length of time of the marriage, the child that needs to be supported until she is of an age to fend for herself, without Heather getting a huge amount of income for life when  she is perfectly capable of earning for herself in the future, when all this press coverage dies down.

The press have done her a  favour even though it is a negative one, but she has got some sympathy and will benefit from this in the long run, everyone knows who she is and she has a high profile for raising money so she will still do well once the press are no longer interested in her.

We will never know the true extent of what went on in their marriage, and we will probably never know the true value of her divorce settlement, so why are we so obsessive about trying to make a guess.

It would have been much more helpful, if they could have found a way to do this out of the public eye, and been able to protect their daughter from all the allegations flying around.  I just wish they had conducted their "Divorce with Dignity".