Divorce,” said the writer Al Alvarez, “is the one certain experience of pain that is democratically available to everyone.” The pain is no worse and no better just because £55 million is at stake, though that can certainly add to the bitterness. According to Alvarez, who wrote a book about divorce after the break-up of his own marriage: “The quest to retrieve possessions is also a search for bits and pieces of your former self.”

Whatever is going on behind the doors of the High Court in London, the insult-littered divorce of Sir Paul McCartney and Heather Mills not only stands as a bleak postcript to an unhappy marriage but confirms the general view that divorce is always a grasping, point-scoring process of retribution, an act of revenge by one side for the injuries or indignities suffered at the hands of the other. Because no celebrity split is complete without a full confessional in Hello! or a tear-stained TV interview in which damaging allegations are exchanged as part of the build-up to a six-figure court case, the general assumption is that this is the way all marriages end.

There are, however, good divorces as well as bad marriages, and, since one in four of the latter ends in a version of the former, it is as important to find out what makes a satisfactory divorce as it it is to lay the foundation of a healthy marriage.

One way of achieving that might be to introduce an idea that sounds, on the face of it, an invitation to disaster but could be the passport to ensuring a soft landing for even the most unrewarding relationship. As well as entering a prenuptial agreement that settles the money side of things, a couple contemplating marriage would draw up a pre-divorce agreement to take care of the emotional aftermath, should things end badly. By recognising in advance that bitterness, resentment, recrimination and blame are all too often part of a failed marriage, the couple would agree to set them to one side in the interest of the children - if there are any - and their own sanity, if there are none.

To this end the language of divorce settlements would have to be avoided, and emotive words like abandonment, adultery, alimony and affidavit would be replaced by gentler terms such as respect, consideration, collaboration and absolute objectivity in reaching the best possible outcome for all parties. Instead of referring to the “divorced” couple, the family would become a “binuclear” one. Lest these seem a little wishy-washy, they would be backed up by a hard and fast agreement, drawn up, witnessed and, if necessary, signed in blood before the happy couple walks up to the altar.

If anyone detects an American influence here, they are right. The Good Divorce, by Constance Ahrons, now 14 years old but still updated and used as the bible of breaking up, is based on research into family break-ups carried out at the University of Southern California, a place with more than its fair share of divorces. An emeritus professor in the department of sociology, Ms Ahrons is more famous these days on TV programmes like The Oprah Winfrey Show than for her academic work. But what she suggests is ultimately only common sense.

Couples who have separated with dignity remain not only closer to their children, but civilised in their dealings with former partners. The Royal Family, routinely castigated for its dysfunctional relationships, boasts one divorce that could have sprung straight from Ms Ahrons' book - Sarah Ferguson and the Duke of York, despite their separate lives, are on good terms with their children and each other. Tilda Swinton, a Bafta winner this week, though separated from her husband, the playwright John Byrne, still lives under the same roof as him, with their children; and, for all the seething hysteria of Hollywood life, Bruce Willis and his former wife Demi Moore are on good enough terms for him to attend her subsequent wedding, and - though I may be ahead or behind in this - her to attend his.

Although cases such as the McCartney-Mills divorce dominate the headlines, in real life such public acrimony is less common. When Ms Ahrons began her research work, she found that out of 98 families randomly selected from the divorce records in one Wisconsin county about half of them had what might be termed “good” divorces, based on co-operation rather than antagonism. She argues that two people who have a child together can remain a family for that child, even if they choose not to be married. Whether they can raise their children successfully depends to a large extent on their ability to form a good post-divorce relationship. That may require skills that do not sit easily with a failed marriage, such as coping with anger as well as developing goodwill in the place of bitterness and hostility. But even the most antagonistic couple, she contends, can learn to form a civil and friendly, if limited partnership. A bonus for those who build such a relationship is that they are more likely to have happy second marriages.

I doubt if many lapsed marriages will need to go so far as the young Russian couple from the Moscow State Circus, who are going through the process of separation during their current tour of the UK. They have a crossbow act that involves her shooting an apple off her husband's head each evening; just one slip would certainly be fatal. That should certainly concentrate his mind, if not hers, on reaching an amicable settlement. For most couples such extreme measures will be unnecessary. However, a piece of paper setting out their aims and intentions before they reach the parting of the ways would help to introduce a similar degree of precision to a process that is otherwise fraught, confused and deeply damaging.

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