Eventually you must make a decision… 

• 1. The mobile phone bill goes missing. If lengthy calls to your lover have sent the telephone bill spiralling upwards, the last thing you want is for your husband to discover that nearly all the calls have been made to just one number. Worse than that, you definitely don’t want him calling that number!

• 2. You stop cooking for him. If he gets home, asks what you’ve made for dinner and you reply, “I’ve made reservations’, he knows he’s in trouble.

• 3. You often talk about how good the window cleaner is, how the tennis coach has really improved your game or why the builders need to stay longer than intended. The wife of a rich, successful man, if she feels neglected and second best to the attractions of work, may find solace with a lover who has far less material wealth but does not substitute financial rewards for affection and attention. Continue reading »

 Using a “friend” as a spy is the height of sneakiness…

In case you missed it: click here for my earlier countdown of the Top Ten Dirty Divorce Tricks, numbers 10 to 6.

Here are numbers 5 to 1:

• 5. Spending money wildly, as a form of “payback”. Some spurned wives choose to take revenge by spending as much as they can on their husbands’ credit cards before the husbands realise what is going on. One client of mine with an Amex Centurion card received a credit card bill for £30,000 for jewellery purchased by his wife from Cartier. A further £20,000 had been taken off his card and to pay her lawyer’s bills. In such cases, the household bills may well be left unpaid. The court does have power to add back wasted monies, so all is not lost.

• 4. Assaulting the spouse and the new partner. This tends to prove much more satisfying if it takes place in public, thus causing the maximum possible embarrassment. I was involved with one case in which the wife was found to have hired a hitman against her husband. In another case, the wife threw a brick through the front window of her dentist husband’s surgery. This was a whammy in more ways than one as the glass shattered all over the practice nurse - also the husband’s new lover - who had been sitting at her desk by the window! Continue reading »

Technology has moved on - but snooping has reached epidemic proportions.

The results of a study, carried out by Oxford University, are printed in today’s Daily Telegraph. Its authors claim that nearly a quarter of all married couples admit to snooping on one another’s emails and text messages.

Reading the article made me smile. How many times have my clients told me about a spouse,with a mobile phone clamped to his or her hand, behaving oddly? The answer is far too many to remember! So far as marital breakdown is concerned, such activities have become epidemic.

One client of mine became suspicious after her husband began sleeping with his mobile phone under his pillow. One night, when she could stand it no longer, she manoeuvered it from beneath his sleeping head, crept downstairs, read the text messages from his lover - and woke him demanding a divorce.

Other clients have told me how their spouses’ phones are now protected by permanent passwords. However, women are nothing if not inventive. Some can surreptitiously bypass the locking devices on mobiles, because they know that their spouses will use trusted passwords that are difficult to forget. For some reason, men often display a casual attitude to the deletion of text messages. In these cases, the clients have correctly guessed the passwords and accessed the phones.

One client bugged her husband’s car, correctly guessing that he would only speak to his lover once he had left the house. This proved to be the case. He also dialled his best friend - and the two of them bragged about their “bits on the side”. This little episode is likely to cost my client’s husband in the region of £10 million.

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Are people who claim to enjoy “no strings attached” liaisons deluding themselves?

Is Britain in the grip of an adultery epidemic? Reading Angela Levin’s three-part investigation in The Daily Telegraph, you would think so.  Perhaps she is right. The newspaper provides positive advice to prevent it happening, and advice and tips on how to survive an affair. So all’s well then!

And yet, I wonder?

One client who came to see me was in no doubt that his wife was having an affair. The couple, both in their early 50s, led busy lives and their three children had all left home. The wife had a full-time job and over the previous six months, had become increasingly remote. Her behavior had deteriorated, and she had become argumentative, irrational and rude. He dreaded her presence, as she kept picking arguments and finding fault with him. My client told me he was utterly lost, and lonely in his marriage.

When he confronted his wife with his suspicions, she more or less confirmed them. In that he was fortunate - most people, when confronted about an illicit affair, will deny it.

So what remained of their marriage? I am afraid that for couples in this situation, the answer is “very little”.

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