Today, there are support groups and boot camps for every conceivable purpose.

Now, one divorcee has made it her mission to be a booster for women going through divorce. Her objective is to empower women with helpful resources and to inform them that life will be good again.

Her tools include a workbook and a book, and, most recently, a daylong boot camp featuring workshops with speakers in complementary disciplines, such as psychology, personal training, etc.

Read more in this Kansas City.com article: Moving on: Living beyond midlife divorce.

A divorce case in which the parties are disputing whether Spain or the UK is the proper jurisdiction for division of the marital assets really needn’t be noteworthy.

But one such case is. Because the parties have spent £ 1.5 million in legal fees.

Merely disputing jurisdiction.

Of course, the precise amount of legal fees does depend upon the exchange rate in effect. Yet, any way you cut it, that’s an awful lot of money.

And the fight over the actual division of assets hasn’t started yet. But it has been decided that that will be duked out in the UK.

One can only imagine what the total legal fees for the entire case will be…

On the other hand, it could be worse. The couple still have about £ 133 million between them.

Read more in this article in The Independent from the UK: Judges attack millionaire’s divorce battle as ‘grotesque’.

An Arizona mother going through a divorce had a lot more than her divorce on her plate.

Her four year old special needs child was stagnating in preschool, unable to speak or communicate. The girl is autistic, has cerebral palsy and is mildly mentally retarded.

Frustrated and desperate, her mother enrolled the child in a private school for autistic children.

The divorcing mother didn’t know how she’d keep up with the tuition, but her parents funded her daughter’s start in the school and she plowed ahead.

A short year later, her daughter is thriving. She communicates with sign language, verbalizes, makes eye contact and interacts with the people surrounding her.

Arizona passed a school voucher program that allows disabled children to attend private schools. That program has enabled this little girl to remain in the private school that has benefited her so greatly.

Despite success stories like this, the Arizona program is dramatically under-utilized. In very sharp contrast to a similar program here in Florida.

How come? Commentators attribute poor response to several factors, ranging from low public awareness to ongoing legal challenges that foster a perception of precariousness and instability. Opponents argue that there is simply little interest.

Despite improvements in public education of special needs students nationwide, local public schools in Arizona were reportedly simply inadequate to this little girl’s needs and, according to her mother, many other area children whose parents struggle to keep them in special private schools.

Private school vouchers, once under hot debate, are again being hotly debated in a dozen or so states.

Read more in this East Valley [Phoenix] Tribune article: Vouchers for disabled students go unused.

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month.

One child in four is reportedly abused by the time of their eighteenth birthday.

Abusers are getting younger.

Abuse is becoming more severe.

Read more in this Chattanooga [TN] WDEF News 12 article: April Is Child Abuse Prevention Month.

The European Union is entertaining a proposal that would require member nations to apply the divorce law of another member nation under certain conditions.

The proposal is reportedly favored by most member countries.

Sweden, Finland and Malta, however, are against the proposal.

Read more in this Swedish radio news article: Sweden Opposes EU Divorce Plan.

An interesting report out of Cornell University offers two key conclusions.

First, men contemplating divorce tend to cut back their efforts on the job. Anecdotal evidence strongly supports this conclusion.

The study does not really analyze the reason behind the finding, simply stating that men “do not throw themselves into work” when things turn unpleasant at home. But one might plausibly explain the conclusion of the study by a desire to weaken a claim for spousal support.

The second conclusion, at the opposite end of the spectrum, is more interesting.

Women contemplating divorce tend to increase their efforts on the job. This is less obvious, although also supported by anecdotal evidence.

The study rationalizes this conclusion in part by the explanation that women throw themselves into the happier environment at work when things turn unpleasant at home. But the larger part of the explanation is that women facing divorce try to prepare themselves to be financially self-sufficient.

Read more in this Australian Sunday Times article: Wives work longer as divorce looms.

It isn’t mentioned whether their divorce court case was nasty. Only that it was in progess.

You can’t help but wonder…

But the outcome of the case was sealed, outside the courtroom, on Easter Sunday, with final and absolute clarity.

There will be no final judgment in court. No modifications or enforcement actions in the future.

Because an Alabama man allegedly shot his wife to death, with a shotgun, that morning, when she approached her front door in response to his knock on it.

She was reportedly killed instantly.

After 16 years of marriage and two sons together.

Accounts indicate that the husband quietly surrendered to authorities afterwards.

There was no mention of whether there had been any history of domestic violence in the marriage. Or any hint or sign of what was to come that morning…

Read more in this Huntsville [AL] WAFF News article: Divorce ends in murder.

A Scottish court has ordered the return of a teenaged girl to Australian under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

The Court dismissed the child’s history of repetitive vomiting and stomach pains based on its finding that the girl’s habitual residence had been Australia.

This although the court concluded that an Australian court would likely extend considerable deference to the girl’s preference to live with her mother in Scotland.

The court concluded that the mother’s presence in Australia should reassure the girl while she was awaiting a custody decision there.

Read more in this BBC News article: Abduction law decides girl’s fate.

A Michigan judge presiding over family law cases thinks the law should change to make it tougher to terminate parental rights.

The reasons are twofold. First, the number of children who enter and remain in foster care, without families, throughout their entire childhoods, has skyrocketed in Michigan.

Second, most of these children want to be back with their biological parents.

An alternative option to termination of parental rights would be for the courts to appoint guardians for these children – unless and until they are able to be reunified with their biological parents.

This alternative would leave all options open, except possibly adoption. But the adoption option seems more of a pipedream than anything else for an enormous percentage of these children.

Read more in this Detroit News editorial: Reform state law that creates more orphans.

Divorce is hard on the entire family. But kids are often stunned, confused and feel powerless.

How parents handle the divorce can make it relatively better or relatively worse for the kids.

Despite mandatory divorce parenting classes in many jurisdictions, many parents could do a better job ushering their kids through a divorce.

It is critical to convey to children that the divorce is not their fault.

It is also imperative that children feel loved by and free to love both parents. That means no putting down the other parent in front of the kids.

An alternative approach to educating parents is to educate children directly about divorce.

That is the approach adopted in a new children’s book that teaches children subtly, by engaging them in the story of a child going through a divorce. As the story’s main character learns about divorce, so does the child-reader – and maybe their parents.

Read more in this Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article: How to help kids cope with parents’ divorce and this PRWeb article: A Wise and Witty Children’s Book About Dealing With Divorce.