Funny, I thought marriage was for life. "For better or worse, until death do us part"
Why divorce?
Why marry in the first place.? Is it because divorce is so cheap. Just like marriage today.

"I thought marriage was for life" chrisgaff1000, looks like again your thinking is wrong, but what's new about that. Being as moralistic and judgmental about others as you are it hardly surprising. Are you still throwing homosexuals into the the Parramatta River?
"Paul1405, No we (chrisgaff1000 and his like minded friends) were too busy throwing them (homosexuals) into the Parramatta River with a brick ties to their leg to see if they could swim. Some did too." Such a comment even made in jest shows the mentality of the commentator.

Paul1405,

That was gracious of you seeing that I erred in the first place.

By coincidence, this morning I was talking with a friend I had not seen for a while who happened to tell me that he and his wife had worked out their settlement over the kitchen table very soon after they had decided to separate.

Having done that in draft each got a lawyer to quote up-front and check through their settlement.

I didn't get the opportunity to delve further, he was heading overseas. However if I got it right the agreement is best done up front and checked by a lawyer (a court requirement?), and then when the 12 months of separation is up the divorce can be applied for and there is a court appearance. They separated in the existing family house (it made financial sense) and slowly untangled finances over the months, with some joint property investments still existing to this day.

I hope I got that right.

However one hears of so many highly expensive divorces where one or both parties get greedy. Both lose.

I am talking about situations where there are no dependents, so as not to add unnecessarily complexity.

OBT, That's true often the lawyer are the winners (financially), people more often than not act out of spite and both loose. Neither my ex wife or I went into court, you have the right to do so, but we didn't. Your right about the 'settlement' I can't remember exactly how much, its was a few years back, that part, but the lawyer there was about $900 plus court fees. The big cost was the real estate agent to sell the property about $16k.
I suppose we could say this about lots of professions. I visited my specialist the other day and $170 for less than a 10 minute chat, not bad I suppose compared to my barrister $3k to appear at mediation for less than 4 hours, and I must say this barrister tried to be very free and easy with other peoples money, I had to speak up a few times to pull him into line. As you can see from the way I post on here I'll speak up when I have to. I think if I had let the lawyers lead me by the nose, it would have cost a hell of a lot more than it did. I would say another $50k, easy.

Paul1405,

My hat is raised to all those who are smart and principled enough to enjoy the simple, fault-free parting of the ways as originally envisioned by Lionel Murphy.

There are lots of columnists, magazines and daytime TV shows encouraging greed, distrust and expensive conflict though.

onthebeach,
You mentioned Lionel Murphy but you forgot to mention he died just before he was about to be charged with criminal corruption. Plenty of NSW coppers had dealings with Mr Murphy lurking in dark places at night as well.
Lionel Murphy knew too much. He died