CLINGING TO THE WRECKAGE by John Mortimer & John Mortimer

Author:John Mortimer & John Mortimer
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780141959832
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2010-09-18T04:00:00+00:00

The Judge’s ‘sitting-room’ is the client’s ‘lounge’.

The Judge’s ‘dinner’ is the client’s ‘tea’.

The Judge’s ‘lunch’ is the client’s ‘dinner’.

The Judge’s ‘magazine’ is the client’s ‘book’.

The Judge’s ‘furniture’ is the client’s ‘home’.

Thus the phrase ‘My husband ran off with the home’, if untranslated, might leave the Judge with a nightmare vision of an entire semi-detached being removed by articulated lorry, when all that was meant was that the ruthless spouse had made off with the G-Plan suite when his wife was out shopping.

‘Falling for a baby’ always meant becoming pregnant and never described, as some of the more rarefied Judges might have thought, an act of tumbling to amuse an infant.

Armed with these and similar equivalents it was possible to build a career in ‘undefendeds’ and avoid any major disaster, provided you could learn to fit each and every marriage into the three immutable categories of adultery, cruelty and desertion. As one or other of these elements appeared to be present in most homes, the legal side of the work was not hugely demanding, particularly as ‘cruelty’ became extended to cover almost any activity in which even the best-intentioned husband might engage. If a man made frequent love to his wife he could be accused of ‘unreasonable and exorbitant sexual demands’ and if he didn’t he was ‘denying her sexual intercourse and causing her deep humiliation and distress’. If he chattered to her he could be guilty of ‘nagging’, if he didn’t you could allege ‘long periods of sullen silence’. Sex, in anything but the missionary position, could be described as ‘perverse and unnatural demands’ causing, of course ‘humiliation and distress’. So remote and long-forgotten acts of love were re-enacted in the witness-box to bring tired marriages to their legal termination.

The strangest element in the then current matrimonial law was the ‘Discretion Statement’. All cases had to have an ‘innocent party’ but some parties, of course, were more innocent than others. If a divorcing husband or wife had ever been unfaithful this fact, in an act of contrition which must have derived from the confessional, had to be revealed in a sealed document which was torn open for the Judge who could then, in his discretion, refuse a decree of divorce. One lover could usually be explained away, but when the numbers rose to two or three the atmosphere in court became grave and disapproving. However, Judges always received the sealed documents with an air of interest and expectancy, perhaps hoping to find in them the names of old friends or prominent members of the bar. Between the Decrees Nisi and Absolute, a period of six months, the innocent and successful party in a divorce case was required not to commit adultery, otherwise the ‘King’s Proctor’ might intervene and send everyone back to square one.

‘What happens,’ I asked my father before I started in the divorce business, ‘if the innocent party’s living with someone else? Do they have to separate?’

‘No. But you must advise them to stop sleeping together.’

‘For six months?’

‘Why ever not?’ My father seemed to find this perfectly acceptable.

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