I agree that marriages can and do break down, but the situation where a person can walk away substantially better off simply because they married you is plain wrong. There is no way that heather Mills deserved that sum from Paul McCartney. Sure he could have bought her a house to house the child when she was with Heather, though other than that she should get very little.

With marriages in general they are now not for richer and poorer, but just richer. As for custody, there needs to be far more joint custody. In the US sole custody is rare, and really only where there is abuse. That needs to be the case here. Once that happens then fathers will get access and we will have far few problems like kids being used as weapons against their former partners.

The problem with the Child Support Agency is that they go after easy cases and not where the former partner refuses to pay. The Agency needed to be scaled back dramatically to deal with just those cases. When the government gave it a target of benefit savings that were too high they doomed it to fail. The ministers should have resigned. New Labour carried on the same mistakes.

As for marriage far too many do not consider the downsides of a break up. "Oh it will never happen to us " attitude is prevalent. My girlfriend and I have already sorted that eventuality out before we have even got married. We have already agreed on joint custody if we have kids no matter what the reasons for the break up. Though she is sensible, a lot of people are not and that is when they become her clients.

Fortunately hasn't happened to me yet...but I have seen it happen to friends and relatives.

I have also seen it happen to my family. My uncle left his wife to marry a much richer woman and his ex wife blocked access to the kids for years. Eventually they tracked him down themselves and asked why he had not contacted them? He showed them a huge pile of letters marked "return to sender" and a mass of presents also returned. That destroyed the relationship with their mother who had lied to them for years about their father.

I have also seen it happen to my family. My uncle left his wife to marry a much richer woman and his ex wife blocked access to the kids for years. Eventually they tracked him down themselves and asked why he had not contacted them? He showed them a huge pile of letters marked "return to sender" and a mass of presents also returned. That destroyed the relationship with their mother who had lied to them for years about their father.[/quote]

I think it makes you wonder whether the "absent father" statistics are as black & white as people think - the mother always gets custody, yet she's quite happy to take your money but not happy for you to see your kids. I'm sure many fathers take that opportunity to cut their losses and start again with a different partner. Not only do you have to see your ex squandering your maintenence payments whilst playing happy families with the new guy, you also have to pay through the nose for a kid you hardly see.