Sir, As a divorce lawyer for more than 25 years, I read Libby Purves’s article (Jan 8) with mounting concern.

While I would agree that the subtitle of the insidedivorce.com website is inappropriate and ill advised, I cannot see on what basis she draws the conclusions she does about divorce lawyers in general.

She writes that divorce lawyers “brag” about a “deluge” of calls in January and cautions against being “conned” by lawyers, thereby perpetuating and fuelling the myth that all divorce lawyers are mercenary marriage wreckers. They are not bragging, simply telling it how it is and has been, certainly for at least the past 25 years.

The vast majority of those who consult divorce lawyers do so with great reluctance and much trepidation and sadness. Very often the divorce lawyer is the last port of call after many other avenues have been explored in the hope of sustaining a marriage. No decent divorce lawyer would ever try to put pressure on a client to divorce. This is a decision only the client can make, preferably having had the benefit of legal advice on the implications of divorce.

We do not start January rubbing our hands in glee with pound signs glinting in our eyes as yet another marriage bites the dust. Divorce, as Libby Purves says, is never easy, and a committed divorce lawyer will see his or her role as guiding and advising an often emotional client through that process. True, we then have the audacity to charge for it, but how many other professionals work for nothing?

Elizabeth Cutler
Marlow, Bucks

Sir, Libby Purves appears to think that a “silly one-night stand” counts less as grounds for divorce than “prolonged disloyalty”.

She is missing the point. By the time you have taken the unforgiveable step towards infidelity, however small or “silly”, your marriage is over. If your partner can neither trust nor respect you (and once they discover you’ve had an affair, they won’t be able to do either), then the essential basis for a successful marriage is lacking. If you do not find infidelity in a life partner shocking and repellent, then you do not really love them, simple as that, and should not continue in the marriage.

These days we marry for love, rather than convenience or financial security (or at least we should). Of course you have to work at a marriage, but those unromantic individuals who subscribe to the “keep buggering on” philosophy of marriage, rather than the romantic one, and place no great value on sexual fidelity, are engaged in nothing more than cohabitation for domestic and practical reasons, rather than marriage.

J. Wright
London N8

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