Darn Divorce

Forbes just released the top ten most expensive celebrity divorces. At the top of the A-list, fat cash bust-ups is the pending divorce between millionaire baller Michael Jordan and his wife of 18 years — which could cost Mike more than $150 million. Nothin’ but net!

Harrison Ford, Kevin Costner, Steven Spielberg and Mick Jagger and their respective exes also rank high on the ka-ching split list. And let’s not forget Paul McCartney and Heather Mills’ split (ranked at number 6 on the list), which could cost the former Beatle an arm and a leg … more than $60 million!

By Vicky Lansky

Divorce isn’t always what you imagine it to be. Now that I have the ability to look back on 10 plus years I have noted a number of things that I didn’t know when I started this journey. I know everything listed here might not apply to EVERYBODY (there’s always going to be the exception to the rule) but it covers most of us.

1. It Takes Longer to Get Your Divorce Behind You Than You Think…Or Can Allow Yourself to Believe.

I thought I had it together after a year. Then I thought I had it together after 3 years. Then I was impressed when I could say I had been divorced 5 years. Then I was devastated that I could be brought to tears in seconds after 8 years when something inappropriate–I thought–was said to me. I guess it’s always “there” but fortunately with each passing year it feels longer ago, less important and more comfortable, but unlike your child’s owies, it’s never quite all gone.

2. Going Through Divorce is a Physical Experience

This one took me by surprise. My body seemed to experience a death defying whirlpool. I hate speed, rollercoasters and the feeling of one’s stomach dropping when on a turbulent airplane ride. But I can remember having all those feelings–simultaneously–while just sitting in a chair after we separated. Yuck! Fortunately this usually passes in 3 to 9 months. Shorter than # 1 but not short enough!

3. It Never Works Out According to Plan…Yours, That Is!

And even when it does, it’s only for a short time. Life after divorce is always changing and you won’t have a lot of control over those changes. We often get hopelessly caught up in parenting plans when we first separate, and–while that is important–it doesn’t usually prepare you for the on-going changes and negotiations that go on for years–changes that you don’t always like but learn to live with. There is the ongoing trade-off of which battles will catch your children in the middle and when one must learn to lose a battle to win the war–or should I say the peace–the peace of mind your children need.

4. Parental Time (aka custody) and Shared Financial Responsibility (aka child support) are NOT Tied Together.

Though they might be tied together in the eyes of your mother or your mother-in-law, these are two separate issues. When you confuse them or make them cause-and-effect items, you do a squeeze on your kids. It seems like such a natural (”if he doesn’t pay support on time, well then the kids just won’t be ready on time or at all” or “I’ll be damned if I’m going to send a check this month if she and her honey are going on a ski trip: a) with the kids (that’s not what I’m sending support for and I’ll see them this weekend like I was supposed to) or b) without the kids (she’s away and I have all these extra food bills this week with the kids here) but this is not a life situation where each month comes to an EVEN tally. EVEN it never is. Equitable is the best you can hope for. Marriage isn’t an EVEN lifestyle so divorce sure ain’t gonna be.

5. You Never Outgrow Your Wish to be the Favored Parent

Remember when your kids asked you who you loved best, you knew what a silly (but honest) question it was because everyone likes being first in the hearts of those they love. Unfortunately in a divorce, when parents aren’t together to hear news in a shared situation, your child will tell one before the other. It doesn’t mean you’re the less favored, secondary or unfavorite parent but it sure does feel like it. So forgive yourself when those competitive feelings crop up from the dark depths of your soul and learn to laugh at them. Just don’t take such moments personally–or too seriously. Remember you’re not alone. We all feel this way.

6. Divorce Doesn’t “Fix” Your Ex

If your former spopuse was cheap, never on time and thoughtless before the divorce, he or she will continue to be right, late and say stupid things in the divorce. The things that you tolerated in marriage under the perfume of love will infuriate you in divorce. You thought you were done with putting up with “_______” (fill in the blank) but it continues just like in your marriage. You have to learn to accept, overlook and forgive or else you are going to expend a lot of wasted emotions on someone you’re not even married to. (If you don’t have the Serenity Prayer posted on your refrigerator put it there now.) You can only be angry or hate someone you care about. (Ain’t that a bummer!) Also, youur lawyer can’t make your ex-spouse be a sensitive person or parent so don’t waste unnecessary dollars trying to have your lawyer getting “through” to him or her. When you can begin to replace the word “wrong” (as pertains to parenting skills, money values, personal habits, etc, etc, etc) with the word “different” you’ll have come a long way towards acceptance. Different values is really the operational word here.

7. Divorce, Unlike Marriage, is FOREVER when There are Kids

Unless you really wish to lose your position as a parent (which is THE hardest on kids), you will have family occasions, graduations, shared holidays, christenings, weddings and funerals that will continually bring you together over the years. Those knots in your stomach at shared public events (especially in the beginning) are known only to others who have been through divorce. No one else has a clue. Approaching your ex first with a friendly word at such events puts everyone else at ease and it is worthwhile practice. And with practice–and some history–you may find those stomach knots actually loosening. Mortal enemies have been known to actually become friends–sometimes good friends–and many find they can be kind of comfortable “cousins”. At least that’s how I like to think of my ex–we’re kind of related but not really closely. We still connect over our now-adult kids and see each other at family functions. I’m proud that we’ve been able to happily share family life-milestones together without it being painful to be together.

8. If You Don’t Hate Your Exiting Spouse when You First Separate, You Will Within 5 Months to 3 Years

It’s next to impossible to skip this one through. It always seems to come as a surprise. Why, I’m not sure. Now you both have different agendas and no way will your priorities (usually money concerns or kid issues) be the same as your ex’s. It’s okay to be angry with your ex (for a certain amount of time–not forever) but it’s not okay to share or show anger with your children or in front of your children. Not easy, but for their mental health, their need for a safe haven and their need to love both parents, you’ve got to keep those volatile feelings to yourself…or limit them to your therapist or support group.

9. The Day Your Ex Remarries IS REALLY PAINFUL

The only thing worse than hearing your ex is remarrying from a third party is actually hearing the news from your ex. Obviously a no-win situation. No matter how glad you are that your ex is your ex, you’d never take him/her back and you’re thankful you’re divorced, it’s still a painful time. It’s the last nail in the coffin of what was once your marriage–and your hopes and dreams. If you know anyone whose ex is getting remarried, don’t let them spend that day alone. And if you know your ex is getting remarried, don’t spend it by yourself–unless you really enjoy digging a dark hole and crawling into it. (Obviously the kids will bve attending the wedding and unsure of how to be of comfort to or deal with the other parents.)

10. After All This, Know that There is Still SUCH A Thing as a Good Divorce

Yes, you read that line correctly. Now this is not to be confused with divorce is good, but it can be done “good.” Read up on how to do it. There are lots of books to help you–even I’ve written one. Making peace with life’s changes is good for you, for your kids and for your life. Divroce is not the path to be recommended easily, but it’s not a terminal illness or a contagious disease either. It’s a time for families (both sides) to rally round, to suport, to help and show love, rather than judge, critique, take sides, and avoid loved one going through a very tough time.

I did not come up with the term “good divorce.” I’ll credit that to Constance Ahrons, PhD, Associate Director of the Marriage and Family Therapy Program at the University of Southern California and author of the book, THE GOOD DIVORCE. “A good divorce,” she says, “is not an oxymoron. Astonishly, in my studies, I found that half the divorcing couples we interviewed had civilized–and many amicable–relations with each other. Another surprise was that almost everybody wished to be on better terms with his or her ex–even the ones who had bad relationships. I’m tired of the doomsday reports and the label of the ‘broken home.’ We have been so inundated with negative stories of divorce that men and women need to hear the message that they can make their families work better, minimize stress and not feel like total failures. In a good divorce, a family with children remains a family–one that is sufficiently cooperative to permit kinship bonds to continue. Perhaps if we begin to revise our expectations of what divorce means, all parents who divorce can do so with civility and respect.”

Vicki Lansky is the author of the DIVORCE BOOK FOR PARENTS (Signet, $5.99) available in bookstores.

Source: Divorce Online

Britney Spears and Kevin Federline’s Easter celebrations couldn’t have been more different.

Britney opted to lay-low in LA, stepping out on Easter Sunday to attend a Lakers basketball game, followed by a bout of retail therapy at the Lisa Kline boutique, where she reportedly snapped up around 3,000 dollars worth of clothes and accessories for herself and her sons.

“She was in a great mood, ecstatic really,” shop assistant Kate Levington told People magazine. “She was lots of fun to shop with. We had music on in the stores and she danced to the music and she ran around and picked out stuff for herself and her boys. You could tell she enjoyed herself.”

K-Fed, meanwhile, chose to indulge in fun of a very different kind, with a boys weekend in Las Vegas.

Apparently still celebrating his undisclosed divorce settlement with Britney, which was hammered out just over a week ago, K-Fed left the kids at home to explore some of Vegas’s more adult spots.

After sunning himself at the Mirage’s private adult pool, Bare, on Friday afternoon, K-Fed dined at Nobu before partying at Jet, where he was showered with fake money by the club’s go-go dancers.

After hitting a second nightclub, Pure, where he took a turn in the DJ booth, K-Fed reportedly spent the rest of the night in strip club, Scores.

But, the would-be rapper was apparently intent on making it back to LA on Sunday morning to spend the rest of the day with his kids.

After an unusual twist in his Sullivan County divorce proceedings, a former Newport resident is facing a felony charge of falsifying evidence.

An indictment handed up by a Sullivan County grand jury last week alleges that John Kolozetski, 57, of West Palm Beach, Fla., doctored a death certificate to justify a continuance he requested in his divorce proceedings in Family Division Court in Newport.

Kolozetski told Judge Bruce Cardello that he needed a continuance because his uncle had died, but he later changed his story and said a Massachusetts woman with whom he claimed to have an illegitimate child had died, Sullivan County Attorney Marc Hathaway said yesterday.

But instead of bringing to court the death certificate of Janet Sellgren, Kolozetski presented a doctored death certificate for Hilda Hole of Rhode Island, Hathaway said.

“The death certificate of Hilda Hole was altered to appear as if it were the death certificate of Janet Sellgren,” he said.

A court copy of the altered certificate still shows the name “Hilda Hole” in the margin, but the top of the certificate reads “Janet Sellgren.”

Both women are dead, and Hathaway said there’s no evidence that Kolozetski knew either one or had an illegitimate child with Sellgren. Hathaway refused to speculate on Kolozetski’s motive.

Hathaway said the class B felony charge of falsifying physical evidence is part of an ongoing investigation led by the Sullivan County Sheriff’s Office. More charges may be forthcoming, he said.

Kolozetski is scheduled for arraignment in Sullivan County Superior Court May 11.

If a woman suddenly starts working longer hours, it could be a telltale sign that her marriage is on the rocks.

Women whose marriages are collapsing will clock up an average of 283 hours a year - or six hours per working week - more than those who are in stable, happy relationships, according to a study by economists.

While one explanation could be that they prefer to spend time with their workmates rather than with an estranged husband, the research suggests the motivation is mainly financial.

Women facing divorce want to boost their income before breaking up and also want to ensure they are employable when reliant on their own earning power.

By working longer, maybe moving from part-time to full-time work, they build skills and are less marginalised in the job market.

Men respond differently. Faced with a marriage break-up, they do not throw themselves into work. If anything, they cut down slightly on their hours.

The research paper, The Effect of Divorce Risk on the Labour Supply of Married Couples, will be presented this week by Kerry Papps, a Cornell University economist, at the Royal Economic Society annual conference at Warwick University.

The findings were derived by comparing women’s working hours with their marital status.

If a woman was married one year but divorced a year or two later, it was assumed that she would have seen the break-up coming.

That was then compared with her working hours to produce a significant statistical match.

“If someone is unhappy they may throw themselves into work, and the socialising that goes with it, as a way of distracting them from being unhappy,” said Denise Knowles, a counsellor with Relate, Britain’s largest provider of relationship counselling and sex therapy.

“I don’t think this always happens at a conscious level. Things may be unpleasant or unhappy at home so they work harder because there is a sense of stability at work. They may not feel valued at home but they do at work.”

The paper also includes so-called “hazard” rates for divorce - the time after marriage when the risk of break-up is greatest.

For those in their first marriage, the risk of break-up peaks after four to five years. Women who remarry are much less likely to get divorced.

- The Sunday Times

Check out the percentages of marriages that end up in divorce from countries around the world (courtesy of Wikipedia).

A surprising 1st place goes to Sweden (unfortunately followed by good old Uncle Sam), while an even more surprising last place can be awarded with honor to the 1.2 billion people of India.

Which brings me to the following question: Hey India, WHAT’S YOUR SECRET???

Rank	Country	Percent
1	India	1.1
2	Sri Lanka	1.5
3	Japan	1.9
4	Republic of Macedonia	5.0
5	Bosnia and Herzegovina	5.0
6	Turkey	6.0
7	Armenia	6.0
8	Georgia	6.6
9	Italy	10.0
10	Azerbaijan	10.3
11	Albania	10.9
12	Israel	14.8
13	Spain	15.2
14	Croatia	15.5
15	Greece	15.7
16	Singapore	17.2
17	Poland	17.2
18	Romania	19.1
19	Slovenia	20.7
20	Bulgaria	21.1
21	Switzerland	25.5
22	Portugal	26.2
23	Slovakia	26.9
24	Moldova	28.1
25	Latvia	34.4
26	Canada	37.0
27	Hungary	37.5
28	Netherlands	38.3
29	France	38.3
30	Lithuania	38.9
31	Germany	39.4
32	Iceland	39.5
33	Ukraine	40.0
34	Norway	40.4
35	United Kingdom	42.6
36	Russia	43.3
37	Czech Republic	43.3
38	Austria	43.4
39	Belgium	44.0
40	Denmark	44.5
41	Estonia	46.7
42	Luxembourg	47.4
43	Finland	51.2
44	Belarus	52.9
45	United States	54.8
46	Sweden	54.9

In a court decision yesterday, rulings came down that Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown’s divorce will be final on April 24th, with Whitney being awarded primary custody of their daughter Bobbi Kristina, 14. During the court proceedings, Whitney told the judge (while tearfully dabbing her eyes with a tissue):

[Bobby’s] unreliable. If he says he’s going to come, sometimes he does. Usually he doesn’t.

Unfortunately, unreliability on Bobby’s part seems to be true - in February, Bobby was arrested for failure to pay $11,000 worth of child support for his other children, and spent three nights in jail.

Source: People

For Israeli families affected by divorce, the Passover season can be a trying time of year.

Consider these three individuals both in Israel and in the US, who asked that their real names not be used. A divorced mother of two toddlers, Jennifer says the Passover seder does nothing to bring her children closer to their father, who lives across the US continent and has hardly seen his kids since the split. Jennifer herself has become Orthodox since the divorce two years ago, and so can no longer attend her parents’ non-kosher seder. Ever since her marriage broke up, she says, the festival of freedom has been “a very sore point for all of us.”

Last time Susan put together a seder in Israel, she tried bringing all the “steps” together: her mother and step-father, her father and step-mother, plus her husband’s mother and step-father. It was, she says, “quite a scene” one for which, not she or her ex, created tension but her parents.

Jessica’s parents divorced when she was seven years old. She remembers splitting Pesach between mom’s English-language seder, stocked with non-Jewish guests, and dad’s Orthodox affair, done all in Hebrew. She says she never felt at home in either setting. …

Recent studies show that single women have a life expectancy of 1.4 years longer than those who are married!

The reason? Married women usually have children, household chores and more stress in their lives which can ultimately shorten their life!!!

Who knew??

Credit to le divorce for the following post:

The New York Times published a story last week about how 51% of American women are now living without a spouse:

William H. Frey, a demographer with the Brookings Institution, a research group in Washington, described the shift as “a clear tipping point, reflecting the culmination of post-1960 trends associated with greater independence and more flexible lifestyles for women.”

“For better or worse, women are less dependent on men or the institution of marriage,” Dr. Frey said. “Younger women understand this better, and are preparing to live longer parts of their lives alone or with nonmarried partners. For many older boomer and senior women, the institution of marriage did not hold the promise they might have hoped for, growing up in an ‘Ozzie and Harriet’ era.”

This apparently did not sit well with conservatives, who immediately accused the New York Times of lying. The National Review called it “cheerleading for divorce.” Rush Limbaugh claims the article is an example of “another far, left-wing, extremist agenda, i.e., the redefinition of a family, the redefinition of traditional family….”

The problem is that for many people the family has been redefined whether they wanted it to be or not. Why are we as a society so threatened by this? So what if the family is redefined?

Instead of attacking the messenger, we should be focused on making sure families- regardless of their structure - work in the best interest of their members.