Leading article: Couples first, lawyers last

Once we have savoured the schadenfreude and enjoyed the spectacle of the wives of rich men suing them within an inch of their last few millions, and that of the husband of a rich woman taking her to court for £3.5m - then what? We can all manage a hollow laugh at the thoughtless phrasing of the judge's ruling in the case of Julia McFarlane, awarded £250,000 a year from her former husband for as long as she "needs" it. But this is not just a spectator sport, gawping at the antics of people who are different from us because they have more money.

There are 170,000 couples that divorce every year in the UK, and more thousands of unmarried couples with children that split up. In many respects social attitudes have changed for the better over the years and the law, too, has changed. The stigma of divorce has diminished, equal rights of women are increasingly recognised and lip service at least is paid to the paramount interests of children. As we report today, the law is likely - rightly - to apply the same principles to unmarried couples with children as to those who are married.

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Yet the mindset of separation in this country, whether among the rich, the poor or those on middle incomes, remains essentially gladiatorial. It seems to be too much about the division of material things, with time spent with the children another parcel to be shared out with the television and the dog. Above all, the moment one partner moves out, the lawyers move in, and lawyers cannot always be assumed to have amicable deal-making as a top priority.

The courts are clearly far from the ideal places in which the terms of a broken relationship should be negotiated. Yet the Government's attempts to promote mediation have been half-hearted and, more importantly, take-up by divorcing couples has been unenthusiastic.

We should ignore last week's excesses of the rich, and especially the rich childless, therefore, except in so far as they reinforce the point that, despite all the advances of children's rights and feminism, we still divorce very badly in this country.

It is possible, surely, to imagine a mediation service that would be generally regarded as the first resort, with the courts a distant last, and which focused on how best to make a different, non-resident relationship work rather than on the division of the spoils. And if such a service can be imagined, why can it not be brought about?