Was It The Scams Or The Begging Letters?
The sad news from the Mirror, that lottery winners Adrian and Gillian Bayford are splitting, probably proves that money can’t buy you happiness.
But I’ve never had so many scam e-mails about these winners, and they have been reported as having masses of begging letters, so were these crooks to blame for the breakup of their marriage?
C would have been laughing ironically this morning, as because the divorce is taking place in her old patch, she might have got a slice of the action.
But they will probably do what many do when they get divorced and go to a high-profile, very expensive solicitor in London, when they would get a better deal and service from a trusted local lawyer.
C Would Have Been Very Happy Tonight!
C did many divorces and in quite a few, she was acting for a wife, whose husband had hidden most of their joint assets in companies, overseas or other inaccessible places. After those cases, she generally came home angry.
But now after the case in this BBC story, things should be different.
And rightly so!
The Oscar Pistorius And Vicky Pryce Cases
These two cases going through the Courts in South Africa and London, are in my mind not news and it is wrong they lead the BBC News.
The first is a tragedy for everyone involved and the second is a bit of political tittle-tattle that is all about the breakdown of a marriage, which went a lot more than wrong.
Why is the BBC wasting my licence fee on these sort of stories? The cases should be left to the tabloids.
The third story, the rise in the number of employed in the UK,should have led the News. Jobs are much more important than gossip.
C Would Be Laughing Loudly Today
My late wife would be laughing very loudly today at some of the legal stories in the papers.
The Times has a story about the large increase in the number of litigants-in-person and how they are clogging up the court system. They were often C’s nightmare, as they delayed cases and put up her client’s bill.
The Telegraph has a story about another couple, who’ve wasted all their savings on who has custody of their two children. C had done many cases like this, although this has a new twist in that the couple are lesbian. At least in this case, the kids seem to know what they want to do and hopefully are old and sensible enough to rise above it all.
You do get the impression, that some people shouldn’t get married and certainly shouldn’t have children.
Divorce Is A Bereavement
This glib and totally fatuous statement was made by Charlotte Friedman of the Divorce Support Group on BBC Breakfast this morning.
As someone, who lost his wife of forty years and 37-year-old son to cancer in the space of two years, she ought to try widowhood at sixty for a few days.
My wife was a family barrister and I can see her in my mind, laughing at the lady. Probably along, with some of her former colleagues, who have sadly passed away in the last few years.
Storm Over A Sperm Donation
This article in the Daily Mail reminds me of one of C’s cases.
She was doing the divorce of a rather nice man, whose ex-wife was an absolute meadow-lady. A meadow-lady was a term from my mother-in-law, which should be self-explanatory.
The ex-wife was ranting and raving about what happened to her ex-husband’s redundancy. So she asked her client and he said that he’d spent it on a reverse-vasectomy. He’d originally had the operation on his wife’s orders, as she didn’t want any kids.
His new wife, who like her husband was rather sensible was now pregnant and in court, you’d have needed a chain saw to cut the atmosphere.
It was certainly a story that C repeated many times.
Somebody Has to Come Into the Nursery to Make Some Rules
This was said by Lord Justice Thorpe, when he trying to sort out a divorce between a warring husband and wife.
C always despaired that divorces like this that ended up in the papers with large fees all round never came her way. I think in some ways, when they first met her, she gave it to them straight and they decided that hatchet burying was the best thing to do.
London Is The World’s Divorce Capital
I’ve read this story in a couple of places today, but the Evening Standard has a long piece.
If C was still alive, she’d be disappointed, that the celebs and mega-millionaires never seemed to come to her chambers in Cambridge.
But who knows what might happen in the future or even be happening now, as there quite a few Cambridge companies, who’ve created a few billionaires and some men will always move on to pastures new.
Divorce may be a messy business, but someone has got to do it!
Gypsies
The BBC phone-in this morning got very heated when they were discussing gypsies.
I lived in the country for forty years and everything you didn’t lock up properly disappeared very quickly. The gypsies always got the blame, whether it was their fault or not. I would say though, that if you wanted to hear a farmer get angry, then just bring up the subject of gypsies.
My late wife, C, was a barrister and she was involved in the divorce of a leader of the gypsy community, who incidentally lived in a 1930s semi-detached house in quite a large town. His attitude to those who claimed they were gypsies, was that many were just criminals taking advantage of rights and our good nature. Incidentally, my wife found him to be a very honourable man, who fully abided with the divorce settlement.
We are on the one hand guilty of labelling a community with the habits of their worst members. But then we’ve done that for years with everybody.
Celebrity Sex Secrets
The Times today, has the headline “Call girl must keep celebrity sex secret”.
It says how a celebrity has got an injunction ostensibly to keep his indiscretions from his wife.
He’ll be lucky if he gets away with this!
C did lots of divorces where all sorts of hanky-panky was going on, but partners always worked out the truth for themselves. So in the end, no injunction will stop everything for all time.
So whoever it is that has obtained the injunction in The Times, he ought to make a clean breast of t now, as it’ll all end in tears. The tabloids just have too much to gain from printing the truth. And somebody will accept their wads of notes to give them the story.
I was once told a story in the 1980s by the manager for BT in East Anglia. He said that when they got complaints about high phone bills and checked, they found that someone was calling a particular number continually. From the pattern, they would often deduce, that someone was having an affair. In those days, divorce details were often reported in the local paper and they often found a divorce followed the phone bill complaint.
We can all speculate about who it is in The Times article, but give a couple of months and it’ll all be in the open.
The Anonymous Widower 