ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author aims to set family transformation through divorce in its legal context and also within a necessarily brief discussion of the author professional development as a family therapist and mediator. The changing research position as regards the process and effects of divorce on the family has been outlined, and new research is emerging all the time, which needs careful critique, not least because of the inevitable biases of the researchers in the field of human relations. In taking a family life-cycle perspective, there are several extra stages that the family needs to negotiate sufficiently in order to resume family functioning. The Family Law Act, as it stood at the end of this Parliamentary year of 1996 with some emphasis on the proposed information session. In becoming a stepfamily, there are, of course, further additional stages, including sufficiently resolving the mourning for the irreversibly changed nuclear family.
