Not surprisingly no one from the divorce industry has replied to this article.

A series of studies in the US has confirmed that the majority of people are no happier after their divorce than they were before their divorce. But during their divorce the divorce industry simply took their money from them, and .after the divorce the children were normally left with one parent only. So eventually the divorce industry does not work to benefit the members of the public, but only works to benefit the members of the divorce industry.

The principle of the Family Relationship Centres seems sound enough, as it would be better to mend the marriage rather than end the marriage. But as was announced in parliament, there are on average only 2 people per day going into the already established Family Relationship Centres, and these Family Relationship Centres were located in what was believed to be areas with high levels of family breakdown.

Even worse, there are already centres where there are no male staff, and all the staff in the centre is female only. These staff must spend most of their day watching the clock and reading the Anti-Male Quarterly

I have little hope that the FRC's will make any kind of real difference while the underlying motivators for court based fights remain.

While the courts continue to reward wrong doing and punish honesty and fair play people use the courts to grab what they can and give that bastard/bitch what he/she deserves.

While the spoils of prime care are the family assets people will resist shared care - they can always hand the kids over later with no consequences.

While we continue to provide the same level of welfare support and child support to those who have gone out of their way to grab residence as we provide to those abandoned by a former partner some will grab the kids when all would be better served by shared care.

While the courts fail to respect agreements made in good faith by parties trying to avoid a nasty conflict people will use the courts to grab as much as they can.

We need some fundamental changes to the way the spoils are divided if we want to keep seperating people out of the courts, not another layer of pain and cost on the way to the courts.

R0bert

HRS, pretty good short summary of the facts of divorce. It reminds me of some old movie I saw in which a lawyer (Danny Diveto) was asked by his best friend to handle his divorce case and win - lawyer's advice: "Win? Nobody wins in divorce. There's just degrees of losing." Or words to that effect.

But on a serious note, the writer, Sharma, identifies a significant problem - "The government has never clarified whether FRCs and their staff are meant to make separation and divorce easier, or make peoples' relationships work and keep marriages together," she writes.

She then identifies a couple of the organisations which have won contracts to conduct this work. She names but two, Relationships Australia and Centacare (Catholic Church). These two organisations are very likely to have extremely different attitudes to the task at hand and without positive guidelines from administration (government), people are very likely to experience widely divergent outcomes based on nothing other than a postcode lottery.

This is a genuine problem.

Relationships Australia is a very liberal organisation, with leftist views about marriage - women oppressed, man oppressor, better off without him - whilst Centrecare could be expected to take a more conservative point of view, although not necessarily.

This matter requires genuine reflection and consideration. Perhaps each centre could be like a small boutique mall, where "customers" could evaluate services from all political persuasions and make a choice as to which one suits them best. Alternatively, each FRC should be forced to disclose their social-political bents in a written statement of disclosure to their "clients". And not in a list of meaningless neo-corporate, fuzzy, rhetorical aims and objectives, which is pretty much exactly what these organisations are presently running on their websites.

This is something the commonwealth must evaluate and address promptly, I believe.

Maximus,
It is concerning that Relationships Australia once called themselves the Marriage Guidance Council, but then changed their name.

Entering “divorce + happiness” into a search engine will normally provide 1 million or more articles and studies on divorce and happiness, but try and find a study that says that a couple is normally happier after their divorce.

I am left to wonder if any Family Relationship Centre presently describes to their clients their likely levels of happiness after their divorce.

HRS, it would be interesting to see some independant research on that topic.

From my own perspective some years after divorce I'm much happier than I was during the period leading up to seperation. There have been some very low periods along the way but living each day without the verbal and sometimes physical abuse is far better. Living with some control over the pressure and demands placed on me is better, C$A's formula is a horror and their discriminatory management of it shamefull but at least it has some limits.

I believe our son is much better off now than he was living in a home where conflict was the order of the day(and night).

I'm gaining by the pleasure of a relationship with a sane and capable woman and my son gains by seeing a healthy adult relationship.

Divorce is sad but there are worse things.

R0bert

When we married, we were in love, honest with each other and had no doubt that our marriage was going to be wonderful. But, after a few years, it wasn't working out that way. No good being critical about the situation, our personalities didn't suit and that's probably the kindest way of describing it. And no way in the world were we going to be able to stay together, regardless of whatever counselling services were available. So we parted. I was 43.

I went dancing every night and had a great social life. I met lots of people, generally in their 40s, 50s, 60s, who were widowed, separated, divorced. I noticed some things. Those who could not leave their pasts behind were usually finding it hard to move on. With many of us, children and finances etc meant that we needed to have some contact, but many simply couldn't let go and were stuffing up their futures because of it.

Another recurring theme. Ladies would often confide in me that their husbands had been great guys, except they drank too much. But they'd met a really nice guy, he did drink a bit too much, but he'd change. Yes, and pigs would fly, wouldn't they? Sometimes it's hard to be realistic, but it's the only way to move on.

I read a book [I think by Irene Kassorla] which said that there was no point getting divorced, because we would virtually marry the same person again. I realised I was getting into a new relationship with a woman who didn't look, feel or act like my ex-wife, but yes, I could see the point. There were some inappropriate similarities. Time to go! I learned to watch for this point after that.

After a while, I met a wonderful woman. She was just out of a very unsatisfactory marriage. We quickly became good friends and a few months later were together. We were inseparable for over 22 years, when I sadly lost her. We both gave each other far more than we could ever have got from our respective marriages.

cont