Marital break-up “legal nightmare’ now

Press, 28 August 1978, Page 6

Marital break-up “legal nightmare’ now

'PA Auckland The legal and bureaucratic system involved in marriage breakdowns could not be more wasteful or destructive, according to an Auckland lawyer, Mr Robert Ludbrook. A woman taking steps to separate from her husband began on a paper chase and bureaucratic nightmare, he told the region? l conference of probation officers in Auckland. When she first left her

I husband, she had mmey worries and would go to the : Social Welfare Department. “She will be thoroughly s c. nfused oy such mysterious animals as the Domestic Purposes Benefit. Additional Benefit, and Special Needs Entitlement. “She will have to start : legal proceedings, and will I have to go to a lawyer’s office where she will comp’ete forms, including information already given to the Social Welfare Department,” he said.

Marital skeletons in the closet would be dredged up for the lawyer to draft a separation agreement. Then the court’s conciliator appeared — when tempers were already frayed. This was the first stage at which any conciliation was attempted, said Mr Ladbrook.

So far, he said, the children had trailed along behind the participants in the drama. Nobody had seen ‘or spoken to them. “They are the forgotten figures.” Mr Ludbrook said he doubted whether a more wasteful system, in human and monetary terms, or a more destructive one, could be devised. The breakdown of a close relationship was a human and emotional problem, he said. “We have created it into a legal problem, and now we are trying to ease out the legal system. We need a new approach, and to call upon human resources to solve this human -problem.”