The breakdown of a marriage can be extremely stressful.

No marriage or relationship will survive if there is an atmosphere of deceit and lies. Trust and truthfulness combined provide strong foundations, but when that disappears then it makes our everyday existence ten times harder.
The recent BBC drama series The Split likened divorce to “open heart surgery that you’re awake for”, although the comparison I personally prefer is that of Pandora’s Box – it can be extremely hard to close the lid once it is opened. Given that background, it is only going to fuel the fire where one (or sometimes both) party resorts to telling outright lies to get their own way.
Nevertheless we live in the real world, and I was saddened (although not at all surprised) to read this article from The Daily Mail about how 30{86e4cd41c7729ee7a2038e95f1864e742d8c437587082557c31e57e26178e16a} of divorce petitioners will lie about a fact (be that the other party’s behaviour, an allegation of adultery, or even a period of separation) to speed their divorce along: read this piece here.
Divorce is a legal process that needs to be followed, but at some stage (often after many weeks of drafting paperwork and waiting for documents to go backwards and forwards from the Family Court, and to the other party) a divorce petition will be placed before a Judge who has to be satisfied on the balance of probabilities that a marriage has “irretrievably broken down”.
When acting for someone served with a “behaviour” petition that has been filed by the other party I would say approximately 95{86e4cd41c7729ee7a2038e95f1864e742d8c437587082557c31e57e26178e16a} of the time clients of mine feel that the content has been exaggerated, taken out of context, or simply untrue. There can sometimes be a fine line between “over egging the pudding” to try and get a divorce petition past a Family Court Judge, and telling a downright lie which may well amount to a contempt of court.
I am very proud to have recently become a member of Resolution, a national membership of family lawyers committed to a constructive and non-confrontational approach to family problems. For further information please contact me on 0121 233 2042 or email me at william.ham@greenssolicitors.org

William Ham

Worcester