Thursday 21 August 2014

Please sir, may we have some more?

Reader's letter from today's City AM:

[RE: Cameron unveils "family test" for government policy, Monday]

David Cameron insists that families should be at the heart of everything politicians do.

But apart from making provision for "problem families" and impact assessments, he didn't say what the government could do now to make things better.

The first area that springs to mind is the effect of removing legal aid from family law cases.

Second, and somewhat ironically given the Prime Minister's keenness to retain a United Kingdom, why does Scotland have such beneficial provision for the rights of cohabitess, but England and Wales do not?

Finally, in order to speed up the process whereby separating couples can make a clean break, why not offer legal aid for family law arbitration?

Marylin Stowe, senior partner, Stowe Family Law.


Ha!

Once I'm in charge I'll put all of these vultures and bottom feeders out of business by introducing statutory default prenup/divorce rules (like so many other European countries), which kick in if couples have not made their own private agreement.

There's a Laffer curve of everything - make the rules too favourable to women and men won't get married; make them too favourable to men and women won't get married. So you can tell whether the statutory rules are "about right" if the maximum number of people get married and the minimum number of people get divorced.

Sorted.