General legal information furnished as a service of Fort Lauderdale / West Palm Beach family law attorney Janet Langjahr
More marriage and divorce statistics.
According to the Pew Forum, among US residents, of all religions, followers of Hindu are the most likely to be married and the least likely to be divorced.
However, the sampling of Hindus was the smallest, so that was where the greatest margin of error existed.
Next least likely to be divorced were Jews, Muslims and Mormons, all coming in four percent higher than Hindus.
Next were Catholics, at one percent more likely to be divorced.
Read more in this India West article: U.S. Hindus Least Likely to Divorce: Survey.
UK attorneys are looking slightly into the future to predict that evidence collected from social networking websites like Facebook and MySpace will be admitted in divorce cases.
Absolutely. Just as happened with e-mails and online chats before social networking sites sprang up.
The value of the type of evidence likely to be developed will vary between so-called no-fault states / countries like Florida and fault-grounded states / countries.
But consider this UK case. A man was barred from any contact with his wife.
The man signed up on a social networking site. The social networking site sent an automated “friend request” to everyone on the man’s e-mail list - including his wife.
The man was sentenced to ten days in jail based on that “friend request”.
Could make the friendliest person think twice about approving “friend requests” …
Read more in this UK Citizen article: Solicitor warning over Facebook flirting.
According to the Pentagon, only 3.3% of military couples divorce. The military attribute this to large amounts of support that the military provides to military couples.
Some find the numbers surprising considering the currently prolonged, stressful separations during deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Others find the numbers misleading in that they fail to reflect the number of couples who hit the skids in the military but who don’t actually divorce until after discharge.
Others challenge the numbers because the army does not actually follow the same couples over time, but counts how many military couples are married each year.
And, of course, the military doesn’t count unhappy couples.
Going against the tide of this report, military women are now divorcing at a much higher, and rising, rate of about 8%, compared to 2.6% for military men.
Read more in this Forbes article: Military Divorce Rate Holding Steady.
No more is it true that “where there’s a will, there’s a way”. No need. At least in India.
Now, if an Indian living abroad wants easier options, he’s got them.
A Delhi court has agreed to allow a New Jersey resident to appear at his divorce hearing(s) via video conference.
This could simplify and speed up about twenty percent of divorce cases in India where one party doesn’t live in the country - or near the city where the divorce is taking place.
One perk of divorce by videoconference is that the fallen-out couple don’t have to come face to face again.
On the other hand, that is also a negative in that last ditch reconciliations won’t be inspired either.
Read more in this IndiaTimes InfoTech article: Want divorce? Go high-tech.
In many divorce cases, the most thorny property division question is: what to do with the marital home?
That is especially likely in a depressed real estate market like the current one.
One commonly agreed to option is for the spouse who wants to remain in the house to refinance the other spouse’s name off the mortgage.
But what if the occupying spouse doesn’t have sufficient income or credit to accomplish what was agreed to?
Well, that may depend on what state you live in.
A Virginia women is apparently facing jail time for not being able to refinance as agreed.
Due to the downturn in the real estate market, she also has been unable to sell her way around the refinancing obligation.
Read more in this WAVY TV 10 (VA) article: York Co. woman faces possible jail time for failing to refinance, sell home.
About half of American marriages end in divorce.
But they tend to last a bit longer today (8 years) than in the past (7 years).
Teen marriages, the most susceptible to failure, have declined.
Most couples are tending to marry a bit later in life.
About two-thirds of all American breakups are initiated by the wife.
Couples who are very demonstratively affectionate in public settings are most likely headed for trouble.
Modern divorces can be nasty and expensive.
One state stands out in American history as “divorce capital of the nation” around the turn of the 20th century: South Dakota.
At one point, the state’s residency requirement was just three months and several different grounds for divorce were available. In an era when residency was typically one year and the only ground was adultery.
Examples of grounds for which divorce was granted in the South Dakota of that era include:
For reasons like the above, South Dakota attracted unhappy wealthy couples from around the nation, who were in search of a quick, private divorce.
More than six thousand divorces were entered over a twenty year span. Two-thirds of them for people from out of state.
The divorce industry spurred the local real estate market, because couples needed a local home to establish residency. And contributed to relatively high local income.
To commemorate South Dakota’s historic distinction, the Minnehaha County Historical Society would like to erect a marker in Sioux Falls.
Read more in this KXMC TV Minot [SD] News article: Marker would recognize “divorce capital” and this Rapid City [SD] Journal article: Sioux Falls: Divorce capital of the world.
Last month I posted Canada to Enforce Premarital Agreements Crossing into Religious Issues.
In that case, the Canadian Supreme Court ordered a man to pay his ex-wife nearly $50,ooo for making her wait 15 years for a religious divorce - in violation of their prenuptial agreement.
The Canadian high Court based its ruling both on the contract and a Canadian statute that penalizes spouses who hold up religious divorces.
Now the ex-husband is seeking an appeal to challenge the statute as interfering with freedom of religion and as being discriminatory, because he argues that it targets Jews.
It is anticipated that the Canadian Supreme Court will decline to hear the appeal, possibly because the ruling was supported on contract grounds independent of the challenged statute.
Read more in this Montreal Gazette article: Man challenges divorce law.
A Tennessee husband was just granted a divorce and shared custody of his kids under unusual circumstances. His wife was not present.
She, allegedly struggling with a drinking problem, had an affair with her 17 year old student, after having another affair with a woman. Her own family described her as “troubled”.
She would reportedly lock herself in her bathroom and drink, go into rages against her husband and even her children, eventually abusing one of her kids for revealing details of her affair.
The husband is charged with killing the teenager involved in the affair.
The wife is said to have absconded with their children months ago.
The Tennessee court has appointed an attorney ad litem and a guardian ad litem to search for and make recommendations for the best interests of the couple’s boys.
Every divorce is unique. And some are more complicated than others.
And some cases put judges in the unenviable position of having to make very difficult decisions.
Read more in these Knoxville News Sentinel articles: McLean granted divorce - Judge orders attorney to search for children of slaying suspect and Judge grants McLean divorce, orders search for children.
An Oregon man is building up a criminal record. And that is putting the brakes on his divorce.
Over the last eight years since his divorce case was filed, the husband has allegedly been attempting to hide assets from his wife.
Upon learning of the supposed fraud, the wife renounced a settlement agreement.
The wife draws support for her position from fact that the husband, under oath in the divorce case, denied owning an interest in a resort owned by his half-brother - but then filed a separate lawsuit asserting a multi-million dollar interest in the resort.
Unfortunately for the husband, his brother testified under oath that the husband intentionally sought to divert income from his own business to the resort - to hide it from his wife in the divorce case.
Now the husband alleges that he purchased an ownership interest in the resort. And the brother contends that he purchased only an interest in the stream of net income.
The husband reportedly refused to enter a written agreement. After all, that could be found and used by the wife in the divorce case.
In the suit against his brother, the Court awarded the husband a substantial (but fixed) sum of money - but no ownership interest.
Part or all of the amount of the judgment may be subject to property division between the spouses - or, possibly, allocated to support.
Read more in this Salem, Oregon Statesman Journal article: Facing charges isn’t new for property owner.
| Listen to Janet |
See if the nonprofit Association against Hidden Family Abuse, Inc. can help you or someone you care about.