Quick Blog Updates

Pink Tape - In her post, Family Justice Under Threat, last week Lucy Reed made a heartfelt plea for people to respond before 13 March 2009 to a Legal Services Commission's consultation on proposals to change the way legal aid is paid for in England & Wales. Significant cuts to legal aid on family cases, specifically disputes between divorcing couples about finances and property and disputes between parents about children are proposed. In real terms the cuts to barristers' pay will amount to approximately 50% overall and as much as 75% in more complex disputes. The danger is that the cuts make practice at the junior end of the work not viable so there will come a time when there are no experienced barristers to take on difficult cases. People will then be unrepresented or will have inadequate representation so individual hearings will run longer, cases will run longer and the system which is already struggling will slow down even more.


Chicago Divorce Lawyer - We often hear about the figures of children from divorced families who do less well when compared to children of intact families, but to my knowledge there are no figures that tell us how many children grow to be successful because they overcame the difficulties relating to their parent's separation. Marie Fahner's post, Successful Children of Divorce, suggests the qualities that Barack Obama learned from the experience of his parents' divorce are reflected in how he has run his life and how quickly he is able to overcome differences. If handled properly, divorce may teach children the necessary skills for a successful future. It seems to me a disproportionately high number of the world's most famous people have overcome childhood adversity and throughout history there has been many children brought up with the absence of at least one parent who then went on to do great things eg Bill Clinton, Gerald Ford, Tom Cruise, the Duke of Wellington, Alan Johnson (Secretary of State for Health) George Eliot, Marie Curie, Eleanor Roosevelt, Maya Angelou.



Darn Divorce - I have just added DWordDiva's blog billed as a collection of random thoughts and news on the Dreaded D-Word to my blog roll. She says "Sometimes its just better to laugh it off, that’s all." I couldn't agree more.



Divorce Manual - - Natasha Phillips is a single mother who has gone through the divorce process in the UK. She also has a legal background and has written the Divorce Manual a guide to getting through divorce. Just a word of caution, although Natasha says the site is dedicated to demystifying divorce, the divorce courts and divorce process in Britain as a whole the Manual is actually about the system in England & Wales.