Law: Custody: Kramer vs. Reality

In divorce cases, as in society, rules are changing

While moviegoers have been weeping this winter over the wrenching divorce drama Kramer vs. Kramer, lawyers have been shaking their heads. Their plaint is not that the couple's attorneys in the film are the least appealing characters since the Wicked Witch of the West, but that the courtroom scenes are legally out of date. Meryl Streep, playing a restless housewife trying to find fulfillment, has walked out on her marriage to Dustin Hoffman, a hustling young Manhattan adman, leaving him with their young son;...