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”.

My client saw no hope for his marriage. His trust and faith in his wife had shattered. He had no wish to “rebuild” his broken life with her.

The wife, too, had signaled the end of the partnership. She had no desire to sleep with her husband, or to share her life with him. She had emotionally and physically committed herself elsewhere.  She was being faithful and monogamous, but to another. An affair had ended this marriage – for good.

In my experience, an affair is a death knell for a marriage. In life, there is no realistic possibility of the positive, forward looking approach advocated in The Daily Telegraph.

 I don’t accept the argument that increasing numbers of us are seeking “no strings attached” (“NSA”) sexual liaisons. We are not animals mating to procreate. We have emotions, we need people, we need relationships and in a sexual relationship, we express our feelings in an intimate, physical way. Why do so with a stranger? What’s the point? Are these people who claim they enjoy NSA relationships deluding themselves? Are they – perhaps even unknowingly – looking for a partner amongst these strangers?

As I sat in my office, listening to my client, I thought of the many other clients I have listened to over the years. None of them have been able to cope for any length of time after learning of their partner’s adultery. They have endured their suspicions. But knowing of an affair effectively terminates a marriage.

Many times clients have told me that having tried to forget about an affair – their own or a spouse’s – they cannot, and neither can their partners. Regrets and recriminations can surface, even many years later. Their trust, fundamental to any partnership including marriage, has been demolished.

Although we are supposed to be living in the most modern of modern ages, I do not believe that humanity has changed. We may be better off materially, particularly in our fast moving Western world. We may lead healthier lives and live longer. However, in common with everyone else both now and in the past, our basic human instincts and our deepest feelings, emotions and passions remain wholly unchanged.

To try and excuse extra-marital sex as a mere symptom of unrest is delusional. As for the view that “no strings” adulterous relationships are acceptable, or can be cured with a good deal of positive effort by both spouses – if this was truly the case, divorce lawyers wouldn’t be nearly as busy as they are.

“The client walked away with millions – and I used the case as the basis for a storyline in The Archers.”

The hardest cases – the tricky, nerve-wracking ones that need a bit of brain power – are always the most interesting. I like to play “intellectual chess”! One such case was when a client’s husband told her, out of the blue, that he was leaving. He complained that he was fed up with her spending, and claimed she was “sending him bankrupt’”. He refused to give her his new address, but told her to contact him at his business. She suspected that he was having an affair with her (newly divorced) best friend.

This couple enjoyed a lavish lifestyle. At their swish, £3 million home, they employed a groom, a gardener, and domestic help. The wife kept ponies in a paddock and stables, and the home also had a swimming pool and tennis court. There were no children. The wife, a former model, now passed her time horse riding. The husband liked to play golf and was often seen in the company of her best friend, who was also a keen golfer.

In “Big Money” cases, as with others, assets are identified, valued and divided up. In this instance, because the couple had been as poor as church mice when they had wed and their wealth had been built up during the marriage, a straightforward 50/50 split looked to be in order. When the husband’s solicitors wrote to me, however, it became clear that he loathed his wife.

The husband gave a different version of events. He insisted that his wife’s incessant spending had brought him to the brink of bankruptcy. His company was failing. The house was fully mortgaged, save for about £300,000. There were no savings. Around £50,000 had been run up on credit cards. There were no pension arrangements, as income had been swallowed up by his wife’s profligate expenditure. He had a decreasing income of £100,000 gross per annum. He offered his wife yearly maintenance of £40,000 – although he said that he was unable to guarantee this sum in the long term – plus the sum of £200,000 towards a house. His solicitors warned that if she did not accept his “generous” offer, he would take her to court and make her pay the costs. The parties had very different stories. Which of them was telling the truth?

In England and Wales, a party found guilty of “litigation misconduct” can be ordered to pay the other sides’ legal costs, even though the general rule is that each party pays its own. This meant that if my client litigated fruitlessly when she could have settled before proceedings were issued, she would have to pay her husband’s bill of costs. This would further reduce the pot she had been offered – and presented a real risk she could end up with next to nothing at all.

In the meantime, there was also the problem of how her own legal costs would be met. With no assets of her own, save for a heavily mortgaged property, she could not afford to litigate. Of course, the husband knew this – and was gambling that her straitened circumstances would influence her reaction to his proposal. One solution was to take the husband to court for interim maintenance, to include a hefty monthly payment for costs if bank funding was unavailable. Given the lack of equity in the home, funding was not available; given the husband’s reduced income, neither was interim maintenance. An alternative was what has become known as a ‘Sears Tooth’ agreement. This is a document signed by client and solicitor. When such an agreement is made, the solicitor agrees to fund the case. The client assigns her settlement to the solicitors, and at the end of the case her bill of costs – as agreed or assessed by the court – is debited from it. However, in very difficult cases such as this, with no apparent assets, a Sears Tooth agreement is useless.

The client was adamant. Her husband was lying. He had millions.

What did I do? I believed her and decided to take on the challenge. I took on the case on a ‘Sears Tooth basis,’ even though I knew it could turn out to be worthless. Then I set to work.

With the invaluable help of Frank Arndt, a German colleague of mine who speaks several languages, we monitored the husband’s undisclosed business activities throughout Europe. A lot of hard work was involved, but the internet provided a useful source of assistance. We uncovered a spider’s web of trade activity.

About a year later, when the case came before the High Court, the husband capitulated after the first day. He settled and paid our costs in full.

How did I finally get him? With an inspiration that struck at 3 ‘o’ clock one morning. I had been awake, worrying about for how much longer we could progress the case. The costs had been mounting, with little to show for our work. Then I remembered a single entry I had noticed on one of the husband’s bank statements. The statements all showed that he was heavily overdrawn. However, the entry itself provided an important clue. I realised that the husband had to have a second business in England.

After we took a calculated risk, subpoenaing the husband’s new girlfriend, it emerged that she had no wish to give evidence in court. The truth came tumbling out. The husband did have two businesses. One was a limited company, with accounts lodged at Companies House. The other was a “shadow” business, owned by his girlfriend but run by him. The business registered with Companies House had been deliberately plunged into decline by the husband, so that he could minimise his wife’s maintenance. All its profits and growth had been diverted to the undisclosed “shadow” business.

The case was a triumph for us. It required nerves of steel; what seems easy in retrospect is never easy at the time. As I mentioned, I enjoy games of intellectual chess. On this occasion, it was a pleasure to chase the husband – into checkmate.

Our client walked away with several millions. And me? Some time afterwards, I was approached by the producers of the BBC Radio 4 soap, The Archers.  The producers wanted a convincing matrimonial storyline for duplicitous, fictional businessman Matt Crawford. This case provided a perfect starting-point…

“If you had the opportunity, would you?”

A smart, attractive lady in her mid 40s came to see me recently. She is a lawyer by profession. Our meeting began very calmly and her problem soon became clear.

She is married to a chartered accountant. He is a partner in a multinational firm. They have three children, aged between eight and 14. They enjoy an affluent lifestyle. They have no particular worries and life proceeds smoothly.  On the surface, all is well and they are the perfect family.

She certainly hadn’t been looking for romance outside her marriage. Unfortunately, it arrived in the guise of an old university friend.

He is the MD of a successful family business. They hadn’t met for 20 years, but bumped into one another on opposite sides of a commercial transaction. He has a family, but has long since divorced his own wife. They “clicked” and have now embarked on a passionate affair.

Her husband has noticed she has become withdrawn and is worried about her. However, he suspects nothing. Listening to her, I was reminded of the film Unfaithful, which starred Richard Gere and Diane Lane as a “perfect” couple torn apart by the wife’s affair.

This lady wanted advice on the likely outcome of a divorce. When I asked how she thought divorce would impact upon her family, she burst into tears and her control slipped. All her guilt came tumbling out, and she said it was a relief to cry. She used up a lot of the tissues I keep in my desk. She said quite simply that it would devastate them all.

I answered her questions and explained that from a practical perspective, a divorce would not be a problem. Financially, the family would be fine. I advised her about the divorce process, the process for a financial settlement, the law about children, the likely costs and how it all worked in practice.

Then I gave her the advice I thought she really sought.

I told her not to do it.

I drew upon my experience gained from years of listening to clients’ problems and told her I thought that,

as long as her husband did not know about the affair, she still had the chance to salvage her marriage. Once he did know, the truth would be out and that chance would become remote. I advised her to ditch the other man and, if necessary, change her job or even initiate a career move. Although the pain of saying goodbye to the other man would be very, very tough, it would be nothing like the pain she could bring upon her family if the affair continued. She said she had “taken the lid off Pandora’s box”. I told her she could – and should – put it back on again.

Personally, I don’t think she will. Time will tell which part of my advice she will take.