Common Sense, Legal Sense and Nonsense About Divorce

About the Book

It would never occur to husbands and wives to turn to lawyers or the law in their marriage. Rather, when faced with questions that they have to answer, they do this pretty much on their own, based on their Common Sense. Nevertheless, their marriage and their divorce are not the same. Thus, though their common sense may have been sufficient in the past, it may not be now, which is why they are going to need help. Where are they going to turn? There is only one place that they can and that is the law. If the law will provide them with answers to their questions, it will have been of great help and deserves to be complimented as representing Legal Sense. However, if all that it does is leave them with a never ending debate as to what the right answers are, it will not have been of any help, and it should be labeled for what it is, namely Legal Nonsense. That, unfortunately, has been and continues to be the sad legacy bequeathed to divorcing husbands and wives who have turned to the law. They are not given any help. All that they are given are false levels of expectation that are then inevitably followed by equivalent levels of disappointment. This book argues that divorcing husbands and wives deserve better than they have been given, and shows how turning to the law can be transformed from representing legal nonsense to legal sense.

About the Author

A graduate of Columbia Law School, Lenard Marlow has written numerous books about divorce mediation, including The Handbook of Divorce Mediation (with S. Richard Sauber, PhD), Divorce Mediation: a Practice In Search of a Theory, and The Two Roads To Divorce. His next book, Metaphors For Mediators: Constructing a New Picture of the World of Divorce, will be published in early 2010.