Daily Stories on Divorce & Family Law

Jeffrey A. and Andrew Grossman

The Columbus Dispatch

Q: My husband moved out of our home after three years of marriage. He has been staying with another woman from time to time. We have been separated for two years. I would have sued him for divorce, but I don't have enough money to hire a lawyer.

I told him that he should hire a lawyer to end the marriage, as we have no joint assets or debts. He said he isn't going to do anything because he is getting along very well without spending money on lawyers. How can I bring this nightmare to an end? I have a good job, but I don't want to spend a fortune paying for a lawyer when he is the one who moved out. What can I do?

Source: http://www.dispatch.com/live/content/life/stories/2010/02/07/wholly-matrimony.html?sid=101

24-7PressRelease

Is 50/50 unfair?  This breakdown has become increasingly common in divorce cases involving children, where fathers who seek primary physical custody are now awarded primary custody about 50 percent of the time, according to Working Mother Magazine. Should we be surprised by this? On the face, it seems fair, but some casual digging reveals just how jarring this is for the family law system.

Traditionally, mothers could expect a certain degree of sympathy in child custody cases. They were widely considered the nurturing parent -- packing lunches and bandaging scrapes while the father worked. When marriages fell apart and parents sought custody, the mother often had the stronger case.  However, this is gradually changing. The increasing number of fathers being granted primary custody is most likely the result of a few, major factors.

Source: http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/press-release/more-fathers-awarded-primary-child-custody-following-divorce-135961.php

Brant Hemingway

Albert Lea Tribune

It has been three years, four months and four days since I last saw my four beautiful children: Benjamin, 16; Daniel, 14; Naomi, 11; and Sarah, 8. In our April 2008 divorce settlement my former wife and I agreed that we would share “joint legal custody” of our four children and that all four kids and myself would participate in “reunification therapy.” That’s because at that point I had not been allowed to see my children for over a year and a half because she accused me of domestic abuse in November 2006. I denied her accusations but my attorney at the time convinced me to voluntarily agree to abide by an order for protection with “no findings of abuse.” 

Over the past three years I have been before Freeborn County District Court Judge John Chesterman numerous times and have paid attorneys over $30,000 but have yet to have even one supervised visit with all of my four children! I have swallowed my pride and jumped through every imaginable hoop in an effort to reconnect with the four kids who are so precious to me but have seen no positive results.

Source: http://www.albertleatribune.com/news/2010/feb/04/are-judges-still-biased-against-fathers/

Terrie Morgan-Besecker

The Times Leader

A state appellate court has reversed a Luzerne County judge’s ruling that ordered Wilkes-Barre city to continue paying pension benefits to the ex-wife of a police officer after the officer died. Shirley L. Kenney filed suit against the city last year after the pension board cut off the $546.43 monthly benefit she had been receiving as part of a divorce settlement with her husband, Bernard Kenney.

Bernard Kenney had been employed as a police officer until his retirement in 1992. He and his wife divorced in 2000. A divorce settlement reached in 2003 awarded Shirley Kenney 50 percent of Bernard’s monthly pension payment. The city ceased payments to Shirley Kenney after Bernard died in December 2006. The decision was based on the city’s pension ordinance, which does not provide for survivor benefits to ex-spouses.

Source: http://www.timesleader.com/news/Ex-wife_won_rsquo_t_get_pension_of_deceased_cop__rules_court_in_reversal_02-04-2010.html

Michelle Durham

KYW Newsradio

The current housing market makes the situation for divorced couples even tougher. What happens when a couple splits up and no one can agree on the financial responsibility of the house? Divorce attorney David Hoffstein of Hoffestein, Weiner and Levitt says the housing situation creates another wrinkle for couples trying to go their separate ways:

"If neither party wants the house, your normal reaction is simple -- you sell it. But the first problem is if your mortgage is more then what the value is in this market place you are now splitting up liabilities. The second problem is there won't be sufficient proceeds for both parties to set up separate houses." Hoffstein says that has led to couples literally staying in the same house and waiting out the market.

Source: http://www.kyw1060.com/pages/6284886.php?

NPR.org

Steve Christie cannot see his son because his Japanese ex-wife has sole custody, a typical arrangement in Japan. He is one of about 70 American parents in that position, and the U.S. warned Tokyo on Tuesday that it must revise its family laws or risk hurting ties between the two longtime allies.

Laws that allow only one parent to have custody of children in cases of divorce — nearly always the mother — set Japan apart from most other developed countries. They also leave most fathers, including foreigners, unable to see their children until they are grown.

Source: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123259204

Rachel Emma Silverman

Wall Street Journal

As we recently wrote, women now make up almost half of the American work force and a growing number of women are becoming their families’ primary breadwinners.  But while the economics of marriage have undergone major transformations, the economics of divorce haven’t kept up. As my WSJ colleague Jennifer Levitz reports,  there is a growing movement, spurred by the recession, to change how alimony is paid.

Alimony, or spousal-support payments, typically involves a husband supporting his ex-wife long after the demise of the marriage. (Alimony is separate from child-support payments.) Men accounted for 97% of alimony-payers in 2008, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, although the share of women supporting ex-husbands is on the rise.

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/juggle/2010/02/02/as-women-earn-more-alimony-laws-lag-behind/

Noeleen G. Walder

New York Law Journal

A man who hired a detective to trail his wife to a motel where she was having an affair with a local priest was not stalking her, an Orange County, N.Y., judge has ruled. Forced to resign after her husband turned over a recording of her and the priest to officials at the church where she worked, the wife accused her husband of violating an order of protection requiring him to stay away from her home and place of employment.

But Family Court Judge Debra J. Kiedaisch, who was sitting in the Supreme Court's integrated domestic violence part, held that the husband, who only handed over the tape at the urging of church officials, had the right to gather evidence to defend himself in a divorce proceeding. "The hiring of a professional licensed private investigator in a matrimonial action to gather evidence is for a proper and legitimate purpose," the judge wrote in Anonymous v. Anonymous.

Source: http://www.law.com/jsp/article.jsp?id=1202441790642&Snooping_by_Detective_Legitimate_Part_of_Divorce_Process_Judge_Finds

James Thalman

Deseret News

A bill designed to give teeth to a long-standing but rarely enforced child custody interference law received tentative approval by a House committee Friday after a lengthy — and at times emotional — hearing. An official vote approving HB197 is all but assured, but committee members first want to add an amendment to the proposal that specifically exempts primary caregivers from prosecution if visitation is denied due to legitimate child safety concerns posed by the visiting parent.

Witnesses supporting the bill told committee members that Utah's tradition of regarding families as sacred simply doesn't apply to people hit by divorce. Laws designed to ensure that relationships between parents and children continue post-divorce have become "a total joke," particularly in high-conflict situations, a divorced-now-remarried mother said.

Source: http://www.deseretnews.com/article/700005793/Child-custody-bill-gets-emotional.html

Hayley Peterson

Washington Examiner

A group of lawmakers wants to make divorce easier for Maryland couples by letting them live under the same roof during the year before the state will recognize their separation-- as long as they don't have sex. "Maryland, in my opinion, has some very archaic divorce laws which are rooted in centuries-old religious predilections making divorce for consenting adults -- who want to divorce -- very, very difficult," said Del. Luiz Simmons, D-Gaithersburg, who introduced the legislation.

Currently, married couples who want a divorce must live in separate residences and abstain from sex for one year before the state will recognize the separation. "In the 21st century there is absolutely no reason that two adults should have to physically separate to placate a law ... that is stuck in time," said Simmons, a practicing lawyer.

Source: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/local/Lawmakers-push-for-more-lax-divorce-laws-83079107.html

Mark Williams

Best Syndication

Illinois joined six other states this week passing a law that includes language for “virtual visitation” rights. Noncustodial parents have a right to ask for virtual visitation either along with regular visitation or in lieu of in-person visitation.

The visitations can take place via telephone, email, instant messaging (IM) or video conferencing. With more people hooked-up to high-speed internet connections, video is becoming more popular. The judge may set specific times for parents and children to connect virtually.

Source: http://www.bestsyndication.com/?q=20100130_virtual_visitation.htm

ELLEN SCHUR BROWN

Cleveland Jewish News

Marlene Sobol wasn’t exactly surprised when her adult daughter announced she was filing for divorce. But the grandmother was delighted to have her daughter and two young grandchildren temporarily move back in with her and her husband Cliff in their Beachwood home. “They lived with me for a year, and I got to be a big part of their lives,” says Sobol. She recalls that although the divorce was difficult for all the adults, having her grandchildren with her for daily meals and bedtime stories was “a wonderful experience.”

Sobol naturally sided with her daughter as the marriage broke apart. But that year, she learned that, as the grandparent, she had to set aside her own bitter feelings and allow her grandchildren to love both their parents. “My grandson said to us, ‘You don’t like my daddy very much,’ and it broke my heart,” she recalls. “It was important for him that we didn’t hate his dad. After that, I tried to build up his father so he wouldn’t be so uncomfortable.”

Source: http://www.clevelandjewishnews.com/articles/2010/01/29/news/local/doc4b61f4f8e879d948968009.txt

24-7PressRelease

Divorce is often thought of as a drawn-out, expensive courtroom battle, but it doesn't have to be that way. An uncontested divorce offers couples an affordable, timely way to avoid the expense and drama of a contested divorce.  An uncontested divorce is appropriate in a wide variety of situations, including the following:

Couples without children avoid many of the biggest, most emotional sticking points in contested divorces: child custody and child support disputes. If you and your spouse don't have children and you're able to agree on an equitable division of your marital property, or, as is frequently the case, you have already divided up your things, an uncontested divorce provides a low-cost alternative to traditional divorce.

Source: http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/press-release/uncontested-divorce-when-is-it-appropriate-134702.php

Emily Jane Goodman

Gotham Gazette

Forty-nine states in this country recognize "no fault" divorce or allow divorce for "irreconcilable differences." Only New York requires that one party in all contested divorces establish that the other was at "fault." Unless a prior separation agreement has been filed, the state's law requires the plaintiff partner prove the other spouse committed adultery, abandoned them, was cruel or in prison.

Now, in Davis v. Davis, a Brooklyn appellate court has rejected a claim that might have expanded the grounds for divorce in the state. The court would not grant the wife a divorce after a 41-year marriage on the grounds of "social abandonment." Instead, the court ruled that social abandonment is not abandonment; only physical or sexual abandonment qualifies.

Source: http://www.gothamgazette.com/article/law/20100127/13/3164/

Sheba Wheeler

The Denver Post

Meredith Moss

Dayton Daily News

Printer ink has replaced the ink from fountain pens in official county marriage records, and the institution of marriage is apparently changing as well. According to the National Marriage Project’s “State of Our Unions” December report, the marriage rate in America continues to decrease, and Ohio reflects the national trend.

“I would say marriage is on the decline,” said Marsha Linkhart, chief deputy of Greene County’s Probate Court and Marriage License Bureau. “When I first came here in 1977, I would estimate that we averaged 1,100 to 1,200 applications a year. In 2009, we had 998 applications.” In Montgomery County, deputy clerks recall when 8,000 couples signed marriage licenses ; in 2009 that total was 3,172. Cohabitation, on the other hand, is on the rise. Seven million couples in the U.S. now live together.

Source: http://www.daytondailynews.com/news/dayton-news/couples-increasingly-choosing-cohabitation-over-marriage-509703.html?imw=Y

William S. Durr

Local Tech Wire

Divorce is a painful process. I know this because for the last 20 years, I have counseled hundreds of clients struggling through this very difficult transition in their lives. Ignoring the tax implications and consequences of divorce inevitably creates far greater pain than that which normally accompanies the divorce process.

A property settlement in a divorce situation may include transfers of cash or property in exchange for the release of support or marital rights, exchanges of individually-owned property, and divisions of co-owned property. When the transfer is in cash, the initial step in characterizing the payment for tax purposes is determining whether the payment represents alimony, child support, or a property settlement. If the payment is not mutually agreed to be alimony or child support, then, ordinarily, it is treated as a property settlement.

Source: http://localtechwire.com/business/local_tech_wire/news/blogpost/6863091/

MacKenzie Babb

VOA News

Child abduction is one of a parent's worst fears, and for a growing number of parents around the world, this fear is being realized and compounded by international custody disputes.  In many cases, parents abduct their own children when marriages fail and return home where local laws protect them. In some cases the abducted children never see the other parent again. 

On July 13, 2003, U.S. Navy Commander Paul Toland returned home to discover his wife had moved out and taken their 9-month-old daughter Erika with her. At the time, Toland was stationed at a U.S. naval base in Yokohama, Japan.  His wife Etsuko, a native of Japan who had become a U.S. citizen during their marriage, took Erika and their belongings from the family's home in Negishi Navy family housing to Tokyo and told her husband she wanted a divorce.  To settle the matter, Toland says they went to a Japanese court.

Source: http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/usa/International-Child-Abduction-a-Growing-Problem---82239247.html

Mike Puccinelli

CBS 2

Joseph Reyes was doing Sunday what millions of parents do all across the country: taking his daughter to church. But for this 35-year-old father walking through the door of Holy Name Cathedral -- so his daughter can hear the teachings of Jesus Christ -- it could land him in the slammer.

"I have been ordered by a judge not to expose my daughter to anything non-Judaism," Reyes said. "But I am taking her to hear the teachings of perhaps the most prominent Jewish Rabbi in the history of this great planet of ours. I can't think of anything more Jewish than that." But last month, a judge issued a temporary restraining order specifically barring Reyes from exposing his daughter to any religion other than Judaism.  It happened after Reyes had his daughter baptized without first consulting his estranged wife.

Source: http://cbs2chicago.com/local/Joseph.Reyes.daughter.2.1432557.html

RANDY KREHBIEL

Tulsa World

State Rep. Mark McCullough wants to make it harder to get married in Oklahoma. State Rep. Sally Kern wants to make it harder to get divorced. The two Republicans — McCullough from Sapulpa, Kern from Oklahoma City — are the latest in a long line to offer solutions to Oklahoma's notoriously high divorce rate. Their proposals follow, among others, former Gov. Frank Keating's Oklahoma Marriage Initiative, a provision discounting marriage licenses for applicants who undergo counseling and several unsuccessful attempts to implement covenant marriage.

"I can understand not wanting to restrain individual freedom, but maybe it's time for the government to get involved," McCullough said. McCullough's measure would require all marriage license applicants to receive at least eight hours of counseling and for parents of minor children to attend counseling before getting a divorce. "I don't think it's unreasonable for couples to spend one day preparing for the most important decision of their lives," McCullough said.

Source: http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/article.aspx?subjectid=16&articleid=20100119_16_A1_SaeRpa522250