D.I.V.O.R.C.E Stand by your man? Someone tell that to Heather Mills. Steve McDowell investigates the increasingly lucrative business of divorce - for ex-wives and lawyers

Divorce is an issue that generates almost as much creative output as the emotion that caused all the pain the first place - that being luuurrve, of course.

Insanity, insolvency and isolation are three things that can happen to anyone, and no-one goes into a marriage with the express intention of it breaking down. But break down they do, with varying degrees of hideousness. And for businesspeople, when this does happen it can have ramifications way beyond those imagined when the 'D word' was first mooted.

In recent years, it has been widely reported that there has been a slowing down of the divorce rate, producing a rumble of satisfaction in some quarters (notably blue) as family values were seen to be upheld. But not even the marriage guidance counselling service Relate believes this, and as a nation we still seem to be committed to keeping up a rate of about 150,000 a year.

Relate spokeswoman Cath Allen says the reason for the fall is because fewer people are marrying in the first place and the stats don't take into account the breakdown of partnerships and cohabitations. Dame Sybil Thorndike, the famed Shakespearean actress, offered up a rather more cultured view than the standard refrain of, "Can't live with 'em; can't shoot 'em" when replying to a query as to whether she ever contemplated leaving her notorious husband, Sir Lewis Casson. "Divorce, never! Murder, often."

The murder rate, however, remains static.

Painting a picture of a typical divorce is tricky and for businesspeople even trickier, since it is hard to pick out the business owners from the stats - and talking of stats, there's no escape in just being a co-habitee as there can be knotty and expensive problems in splitting up there, albeit dealt with differently.

Relate says they would fall under 'high pressure' relationships. Counsellor Christine Northam reckons it is a facet of modern times that people committed to their work haven't the time, energy or will to devote to their relationships. "You have to find time to relax. Have fun and give it time. We are all supposed to be having a stellar career, two holidays a year, going to the gym and having fantastic sex morning, noon and night. This is nonsense. You can't do that if you've got no time and you're all stressed."

There is a great spectrum of divorce, from the multi-million pound throat-tearing exhibitions that are visible in occasional vivid headlines, to the simple, OK-we-made-a-mistake number - the so-called "quickie" - which is what, ironically, may have got you into trouble in the first place.

Former Beatles and one-legged gold diggers (and we don't mean disabled South African miners here) aside for a moment, there have been some spectacular settlements at the upper-end of the scale in recent times.

Marriage: Yours For £4,935.83 A Day
Alan Miller, a 41-year-old star fund manager from New Star Asset Management, brought his 33-month marriage to his American-born wife Melissa to a close in the most public of fashions last year. While they were married, he made a great deal of money and his wife had given up her £85,000 a year job to spend her time between their Chelsea townhouse and their villa in the South of France. The poor lamb was compensated for her short, childless, ill-fated marriage with £5 million of Miller's wealth. In short, his marriage cost him £4,935.83 a day. Roughly the cost of childcare in Chelsea, coincidentally.

At the other end of the spectrum is the rather sweet case of Clive Mills, a 33-year-old manufacturer from Hampshire, who ended his marriage to his childhood sweetheart without paying a single quid to a lawyer.

It was made possible, he says, because: "We reached the conclusion that though we loved each other we had made a mistake in getting married,
that we had grown up and didn't have anything in common any more."

Once that decision was reached, Mills downloaded the relevant forms from the Court Service, filled them in and presented them to the court.

"Like all government and legal forms they were insanely complicated, but the Court Service people were really helpful and rang me up to tell me where I had gone wrong. We weren't in any hurry and, in due course, after two years of separation, we went our separate ways. Easy."

Mills estimates his total legal bill at "a few hundred pounds".

Men On The Run
Few would argue that one of the attributes one needs to make a successful career in business is decisiveness - and therein lies a paradox about when and where one should make the decision to divorce.

Say you own a business and your spouse has a shareholding. And say the business is looking good, with the curves going in the right direction, while his or hers are not. This means one is faced with the dilemma that the longer you leave the decision and the more successful the business, the more it will cost you, so it is better to act now, be decisive, and get out.

The Office of National Statistics reveals that in six per cent of cases in 2005, 'workaholism' was cited as grounds in divorce petitions, something entrepreneurs may be familiar with. Jon Maguire, a serial entrepreneur who has been divorced three times (his last wife was 'the other woman' in the Alan Miller case), says it's occasionally a fact of life for businesspeople. "The best way, surely, is one that makes you both as thick as thieves in business, because work and private life are seamless. The triumph of this logic is that I have burned my way through three wives."

He is, however, reluctant to contain his schadenfreude: "In my ex-wife and Alan's case, I sort of wondered who won and who lost if he picks up a 39-year-old, and has to pay £5 million for the privilege, which put me into the arms of a gorgeous 25-year-old, costing me nothing. When entrepreneurs end up wife swapping, you can't help smile at coming off an awful lot better on the deal."

One result of the 'Miller Effect' is that rich men are now terrified of divorce. Philip Rutter, partner of Collyer Bristow in Central London, says: "The Court of Appeal said the reasons for the breakdown of a marriage should be taken into account and there should be a 50/50 split regardless of the length of that marriage. So even if your marriage is very short it could be very expensive if you have earned a lot during it."

Mr Rutter conceded it was impossible to tell what the reasons for the fall in the divorce rate in recent years have been, though the cost may well be one factor.

The Price Of Rancour
"One possibility is wealthy people are being scared off divorce, or are taking counselling a bit more seriously, perhaps," Rutter says.

"But we do increasingly get people in saying, 'I want to fight all the way'. And then they get a few legal bills and all of a sudden they want to get amicable."

Other than not getting married in the first place, amicable seem be the best guide to the path of least, and therefore cheapest, resistance. At somewhere between £250 and £450 an hour plus VAT, if you live in London, you don't really want to start firing legal letters off to each other just to pay the milkman.

"If it's amicable, it's possible to get divorced for £5k each," says Rutter. "Acrimonious, say £20k each, and very messy, call it £300k - £400k."

One might be tempted, if approaching divorce, to start hiding assets. Rutter counsels against this as courts have extensive powers - such as appointing a forensic accountant - to find and recover them.

Maguire agrees - sort of: "In terms of playing clever games around hiding assets, don't bother. All you need to do is borrow like crazy (loan value matched off against private share capital) whatever value you care to come up with, bearing in mind that the emotional fallout is apparently supposed to lead to you being incapable of running a lawnmower, let alone a business empire."

Consequently, much has been heard these days about another import from the US, the pre-nuptial agreement. While legally binding over the water, a pre-nup here, as yet, is best described as a hedged insurance policy, as it can be overruled or even ignored altogether by a judge if "unfair" or new circumstances are deemed to be in force. Claire Gardner, a family partner with Clarkson, Wright & Jakes in Orpington, Kent, says, increasingly, she is required to draft pre-nups and in general terms recommends them. Despite being fallible they are, at an average cost of £500 to £1,000, well worth doing, especially if there is a business that well could be at issue.

"The Miller Effect has increased the uncertainty over matrimonial law in England," she says. "It does seem currently to be going against wealthy husbands. If you are going to get married, the best advice, unless you are able to marry someone wealthier than yourself, is to get a good pre-nup."

Claire Gardner's Guide To An Effective Pre-Nup
» Get legal advice on both sides
» Make it as long in advance of the wedding as you can (at least 21 days)
» Make sure both parties have fully disclosed their assets
» Re-visit it if you have a child

Philip Rutter's Pointers On How To Price Your Divorce
» Cheap And Easy
» Make it as amicable as possible
» Don't try to hide assets
» Get a good family lawyer on board

Expensive And Nasty
» Get lawyers to fight every point
» Do as much as you can to create ill feeling
» Stubbornly refuse to entertain mediation