An Accomodation

“~ and I both agreed that something had to change,

but I was still stunned and not a little hurt when I

staggered home one evening to find she’d draped a

net curtain slap bang down the middle of our home.

She said, “I’m over here and you’re over there, and

from now on that’s how it’s going to be”. It was a

small house, not much more than a single room,

which made for one or two practical problems”.

From An Accommodation, by Simon Armitage.

Sitting next to Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate, at a recent dinner at Trinity College Oxford, I did not then know his poem about separating spouses.

If I had known about it, I would have asked him what triggered the quasi-humorous picture of the literal curtaining of their home midway between them; an absolute 50/50 division.

Where did his metaphors come from?

I’ve spent my life working with and for people who want a division of capital and income; and, more crudely, a division of their children’s time.

In our family law clinic this last year, we have looked after many clients who want to see their children.

I’m thinking now of several parents who have not seen their children, let alone hugged them or spoken to them, for months and months.

And I’ve observed in some of those cases the building of walls between parents. Walls that you can’t look through or over, and cannot peek around.

With the children stuck behind those walls.

It’s made me think of children as victims of those parents’ separation.

In one of those cases, there was a really co-operative lawyer who worked for my client’s wife, and worked hard with me to set up contact between the father and his children at a contact centre. She was truly a facilitator for the children of time spent with our client.

That young lawyer was able to rip away the curtain that separated the parents, and to allow the children go from one side of the room to the other.

And look then at the children benefitting from healthy relationships with both their parents - rather than being victims.

So lawyers get adept at helping our clients to lift that curtain, to scale that wall, even to walk together round the room.

I like having gold standards like this one particular case, and trying to attain those standards in all the cases that we do.

Don’t humanity and common sense lead to parents being flexible and generous-hearted, rather than trying to impose a wall between themselves after separating - especially where children are involved?

Don’t we family lawyers have a responsibility to open a door and to keep it open, rather than slamming it shut?

Let’s go back to Simon Armitage’s poem for the optimistic development of the separated relationship.

“And there good times too, sitting side by

side on the old settee, the curtain between us, the

TV in her sector but angled towards me, taking me

into account”.

Can we family lawyers be influenced or even moved by this kindness and co-operation?

Simon Bruce - Supervising Solicitor, London, 19 June 2021