NO-FAULT_DILEMMA_

Your recent feature on dropping parts of the Family Law Act raises significant issues (see [2001] Gazette, 1 February, 26).

Various family lawyers are quoted...Your recent feature on dropping parts of the Family Law Act raises significant issues (see [2001] Gazette, 1 February, 26).

Various family lawyers are quoted, one as seeing no-fault divorce as certainly the way forward for couples and that this was an option for couples to divorce with dignity.

The writer of your article says the legal profession and divorcing couples hope to see no-fault divorce plans return.

It may be that the legal profession, or at least family law activists, want this, but I have never seen any significant demand from the public as distinct from pressure groups for no-fault divorce.

Your article is an example of how pressure for change has come from lawyers and not the public.

Mediation is a prime example.

The lawyers wanted it, The public did not want it, hence it flopped, The lawyers still fail to see that, as in many other examples in the field, the so-called reforms failed because the only people who wanted them were the lawyers and social academics.

Adrian JG Pellman, Pellmans Solicitors, Oxford