That's men for you - Padraig O'Morain's guide to men's health: Couples get married in a haze of romance and break up in a haze of legalities.
If the break-up is happening to you right now, it is important to avoid some of the really bad sources of legal information which people turn to at such times.
The first really bad source is alleged advice given by the other spouse's solicitor.
You would be surprised at how often people use this "source". It works like this: one spouse doesn't really want the marriage to break up and is too shocked and bewildered by what is going on to organise proper advice.
But the spouse who wants to end the marriage is "all lawyered-up", as they say in the US.
This spouse claims to have been told by the solicitor that the reluctant spouse is only entitled to this or that, is obliged to pay this or that and will never see the children again if he or she fails to go along with these demands.
From some of the stories I've heard, I would say that most of this "advice" is made up by one spouse for the purpose of frightening the other into taking a bad deal.
The second bad source of information is the barrack-room lawyer. By barrack-room lawyer I mean the guy sitting next to you in the bar or across the table in the canteen. Or maybe the barrack-room lawyers are your girlfriends, who think they know everything because all their marriages have broken up and who are urging you to adopt a policy of total war.
Remember that to them it doesn't matter if their legal advice is rotten: you're the poor mug who will pay the price.
So do yourself a big favour and get your legal advice from somebody who is fit to give it to you.
That somebody is likely to be a solicitor retained and paid by you. Another excellent source of information, and a good starting point, is Aim Family Services.
Aim, founded in 1972, is a voluntary organisation which offers non-directive counselling, legal information and a family mediation service to people with marital, relationship and family problems. After more than three decades of dealing with these issues, they know the ground very well indeed. They have been running a drop-in centre since 1975.
The drop-in centre is at 6, D'Olier Street, Dublin and is open from 10am-1pm, Monday to Friday. If you live too far away to drop in, you can ring
01 6708363 or e-mail aimfamilyservices@eircom.net.
They have published an extremely helpful range of leaflets on legal issues surrounding marriage breakdown.
You can ask them to send these leaflets to you or you can log on to www.aimfamilyservices.ie and read them online.
You might also ask your partner to consider attending the Family Mediation Service with you.
The service, run by the Family Support Agency, helps separating couples (married and unmarried) to work out issues such as parenting, finance, property and pensions.
Through meetings with a professional mediator, the couple reaches an agreement on these issues and they can then take the agreement to their respective lawyers to have it drawn into a legal deed of separation. Mediated agreements, because they are made entirely voluntarily, represent what both parties believe they can live with, so they tend to be quite successful. And the service is free.
The Family Mediation Service is available throughout the State and you can get local details by looking up the Family Support Agency in the State Directory section of the phone book, by ringing 01 6114100 or by logging on to www.fsa.ie.
You can get masses of reliable, free information on legal aspects of marriage breakdown from the Government's excellent Oasis website, which is run by Comhairle.
Go to www.oasis.gov.ie, scroll down to "relationships", click on "separation and divorce" and you'll find enough clear, well-written information to keep you going for weeks.
So don't listen to bad, twisted or ill-informed advice. Use one or more of the sources in this article and get the real deal.
And tell the barrack-room lawyers to take a hike.
• Padraig O'Morain is a journalist and counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.