It often starts with routine visitation that begins – routinely. Only the non-custodial parent doesn’t return the child(ren) on time – or late.

And that’s how it happened when an Illinois law enforcement officer and father allegedly abducted his two daughters to a religious colony in the nation of Belize.

Thanks to the unsolved kidnapping catching the interest of TV’s Dr. Phil, the girls are now back home with their custodial mother, according to an article in the East Central Illinois News-Gazette.

The father is reportedly now under a no-contact order and faces criminal charges.

One can’t help but wonder how the many cases that don’t attract such media attention turn out.

It’s no surpise that a divorce can have an enormous impact on a small business owned by one or both of the spouses. But, under the right circumstances, a divorce of a key corporate player has the potential to exert an enormous impact even on a publicly-owned corporation.

Consider the pending divorce of Stephen Pomeroy, the recently designated CEO of Pomeroy IT Solutions, a company currently listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange. According to a Cincinnati Post article, Jennifer Pomeroy, his wife, recently filed at least three related lawsuits in addition to her divorce action.

At least one of her lawsuits reportedly strikes at the very heart of corporate operations, alleging serious misconduct by key personnel. And the company reportedly may face being dropped from NASDAQ.

At least one other of her lawsuits reportedly raises very serious questions about her husband’s alleged propensity for violence.

One of the interesting sidenotes of the article is that the Pomeroys reportedly made a prenuptial agreement.

Most people think of prenups as ways to control property that they acquire either before or during the marriage in the event of death or divorce. Or to avoid or limit alimony in the event of divorce.

But there’s another important, although less obvious, reason for prenups that is implicit: the hope of avoiding wide-ranging litigation that may affect a spouse’s reputation and business, whether directly or indirectly.

Sometimes, the best-laid plans go awry …

One way the anticipated custodial spouse can probably save an ailing marriage (where there are minor children) is simply to advise the expected non-custodial spouse of how much child support he or she would be obligated to pay in the event of a divorce.

At least that’s the cynical conclusion of a study recently reported on by the Observer UK. But “word on the street” in this country does lend some support to the study’s conclusions even outside the UK.

You can read more about reaction to the study in the UK in Cash fears lead to fall in divorce rates.

You consult an attorney. You retain him/her. You give him/her a braindump of all the pertinent facts about your case. You bring him/her all the financial documents that he/she asked you for. He/she gives you some instructions about additional requirements you must fulfill. You fill out a bunch of paperwork. When you walk out of the attorney’s office, you leave the case in your attorney’s expert hands. Now you wait for him/her to tell you when it’s over. Right?

A lot of people seem to think so. But, in most cases: wrong, bad idea. Perhaps, unfortunately so. But, nonetheless: wrong, bad idea.

These days, it can be an enormous mistake to follow the “blind faith” path described in the opening paragraph of this post, even if it seems to be OK with your lawyer, perhaps especially if it seems to be OK with your lawyer.

Your case is your case. Would you leave it to your criminal lawyer to enter a “surprise-me” plea and tell you what it was after he/she entered it? Would you leave it to your criminal lawyer to try your case and let you know how it turned out afterward? Of course not.

Is custody of your children less important? Or visitation? How about support of your children? What about support for yourself or your spouse? And who gets the house? Who’ll pay the debt? Or dealing with the history of abuse by one spouse? Etc., etc.

While the arguably happy mis-perception of a no-muss, no-fuss divorce may be tempting during the early phase of your case, in some (if not most) cases, if you haven’t been minding your case from the get-go, your pleasant bubble of euphoria may eventually burst – expensively, loudly and gruesomely – leaving behind a lot of damage that cannot be undone easily, maybe not at all.

The process of divorce can vary dramatically from case to case, depending, in part, on the spouses and their respective attorneys. The process can affect the legal results in the case.

Just as importantly, it can affect the emotional outcome of the case, the quality of the post-divorce relationships of ex-spouses, co-parents and children. Make no mistake: it is you and your family who will have to pick up the pieces – alone, after the lawyers move on to their next cases, sadly, often without a backward glance.

It is important to determine at your initial consultation whether the attorney you will be retaining views the case as the lawyer’s case or as the client’s case. This will tell you a lot about the likely process of your divorce – and whether you want a particular attorney to be the one helping you to shape the process of your divorce case.

One extreme case going on right now. Long term marriage. Couple’s behavior indicates that they have not totally given up on being a couple and a family. I mention the possibility of reconciliation frequently to my client, the husband.

Wife’s lawyer embarks on a legal crusade, an expensive crusade, pouring oil on the couple’s still-flickering flames. Not unpredictably, wife has second thoughts about reconciling.

I suggest to the husband that he and his wife consider a “stay” (or hold) in the case for a while, so they can concentrate on trying to reconcile without having to deal with the “bad blood” being aroused by what had quite unnecessarily (in this case) turned into a legal battle. The couple agrees.

I contact wife’s lawyer to get his written agreement to a stay. Amazingly, wife’s lawyer rejects the stay, while acknowledging that couple is talking reconciliation.

Since, surprisingly, it is necessary, I push harder on Wife’s lawyer to agree to the stay, without having to waste time and money on taking it to the judge. Knowing he will lose this one, he grudgingly relents and agrees to a 30 day stay – providing that he be allowed to file one motion during the stay. Husband agrees.

While the parties are trying to reconcile, wife’s lawyer’s serves not an ordinary motion but a nasty (and completely unnecessary) motion. Wife tells husband that she instructed her lawyer to take out the nasty parts of the motion, but she guesses “he couldn’t help himself”.

Thirty days goes by. Reconciliation is still on track. I so advise Wife’s lawyer and request an extension of the stay.

Again, Wife’s lawyer refuses. However, Wife’s lawyer drops part of his crusade. But he replies that Wife is anxious to proceed with divorce. News to me.

I relay to client, and wife and husband speak again. Husband reports that wife never told her lawyer that she wanted to proceed with the divorce, only that she wanted to continue the stay.

Remarkably, this is still going back and forth. Unfortunately, Wife didn’t give any thought to the process of her divorce back at the beginning, Wife is overly-deferential to her overzealous attorney – and Wife’s attorney views the case as his case and views his client as little more than a chess piece for him to push around his game board.

But the couple is still working on reconciling.

I can take care of wife’s mis-guided attorney and his questionable tactics. It’s just sad that it’s necessary. And that the family has to pay for it.

Mind your case. And avoid what is happening to this family – and many other families – where one of the parties drops the ball and doesn’t mind their case.

Why in the world would a biological mother bring an action to adopt her own child?

In extreme cases of abandonment, abuse or neglect of a child, an action can be brought to terminate the legal rights of biological parent(s) to his/her own child. Usually the party bringing that drastic action is the state which has intervened to protect the child, and generally only after exhaustive efforts have been made to rehabilitate the parent’s parenting.

But an interested private party can also bring an action to terminate parental rights.

At the time that a child is legally adopted, all legal rights of the biological parents to that child terminate as a result of the adoption. An adoption case, in effect, includes a “streamlined” termination of parental rights case – without all the “rough edges”.

In a recent New York case, a child’s mother reportedly tried to adopt her own child – with the alleged intention of “quietly” terminating the legal rights of the allegedly abusive biological father of the child.

The New York courts disallowed the mother’s reportedly “sneak attempt” to terminate the father’s parental rights because they found that the mother didn’t comply with the stricter requirements of a full-blown termination of parental rights action. If the mother wanted to terminate the father’s parental rights, she couldn’t cut corners; she had to bring an action to properly do precisely that.