I SHARE the repugnance and concern of family values campaigners about the new cut-price quickie divorce service on the Internet.

After all, with almost half of British marriages already ending in the courts, is it good for our society, already bulging with stepchildren and single-parent households, to be encouraging more by making divorce even easier and more accessible?

But apart from the increase in the already badly-eroded institution of marriage that is threatened by this development, one aspect of it puts an intriguing focus on who has been doing very nicely thank-you out of the UK divorce boom - the lawyers.

For, although this Internet divorce package has the fingerprints all over it of legal whizz kids out to make a fast buck, does not their charge of £79.99 contrast most sharply with the £400 average charge by a firm of solicitors handling an uncontested divorce case?

If the advent of cheap and easy legal help via the Net is to put this sort of pressure on lawyers to bring down their dreaded charges, then perhaps some good might come out of this otherwise-repellent departure.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.