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We saw some very interesting figures quoted on another site this week, which we believe our readers will be interested in and which demonstrate just how big an impact the proposed legal aid cuts are likely to have on divorce. The figures are from 2009 but there’s no reason to suppose they will be radically different this year or last year. so, here goes :-

• In 2009,  just under 114,000 divorce petitions were started.
• Over 87,000 of those divorces were funded by legal aid.
• Some 70% of divorce petitions are started by women and a proportion of those will obviously be non-working mums who do not have their own income.

Whether you are for or against divorce being fairly easy to obtain in England & Wales or for or against the legal aid system, the above clearly shows that removing legal aid in areas like divorce will have a very significant impact which is difficult to predict. With unhappy families forced to stay together, could there be a devastating impact on children ? With more people forced to go to court themselves will this result in huge extra resources being needed to run the courts thereby making the costs savings of cutting legal aid a farce ?

These are just a couple of possible if not likely outcomes, there are likely to be many more. what is your opinion ? Please do let us know.