Wealthy Wife and Husband divorce in UK in 2007.

Marital assets are divided equally.

The trial court also orders Wife to compensate Husband from her share of the marital estate for some real estate losses he suffered. This is in addition to his receipt of half of the marital assets.

Wife appeals that ruling, arguing that Husband may recover his losses in the future.

Court excludes evidence that those property values have already rebounded to a degree.

Wife proposes that the properties be sold within five years, with the profits or losses being shared equally.

Husband and Wife await the British appellate court’s ruling.

Read more in this UK Telegraph article: Frisbee heiress launches bid to overturn ‘monstrously unfair’ divorce settlement.

A couple of months ago, I posted a Warning to Seriously Ill Women: Be Prepared to Be Divorced … Now based on a study.

Another study concludes that parents of a child suffering from cancer are not statistically significantly more likely to divorce than any other parents, even if the child dies. This survey looks at nearly a million couples living in Norway over a twenty-five year period.

The people conducting the survey believe it shoots down an insidious myth. But they are quick to admit that living in Norway may defuse many of the stresses of parents of children with cancer because Norway has free medical care and an extensive social welfare system.

The study also reports a greater risk of divorce in the subset of couples where the wife is college-educated, particularly where the child’s cancer involves the child’s central nervous system. The reasons are unknown, but it is speculated that more educated women face more stresses juggling a career with child care, particularly where the child has special needs.

Read more in this Reuters article: Child’s cancer does not raise divorce risk: study.

Couple separate.

Husband condemns divorce and threatens Wife numerous times.

Wife gets injunction for protection against domestic violence, or restraining order, against Husband.

Wife requests that Husband be allowed only supervised visitation with their three and five year old Children.

Court, however, orders unsupervised visitation for Husband, including weekly overnight timesharing with the couple’s three and five year old Children.

Exchanges are conducted at Wife’s Mother’s home for her safety.

Divorce goes through.

During latest visitation, Husband sends increasingly disturbing text messages to Wife, in which he seems to try to lure Wife to his location.

One message alarms Wife and she calls police.

Upon investigation at Wife’s Mother’s home, police discover Wife’s Mother and both Children dead. Wife’s Mother was shot and Children were stabbed to death.

Husband is charged with “aggravated” murder.

Husband’s defense seems to be that Wife divorced him.

Husband is convicted of murdering all three victims and is sentenced to death.

Read more in this Cleveland WJW-TV Fox 8 news article: Ex-Wife: Mammone Admitted Killing Their Kids, Her Mom and this Canton[OH] Repository article: James Mammone III gets death sentence for murdering children, former mother-in-law.

Mother and Father break up.

Their Son is 5 years old.

Court awards custody of Son to Father.

Mother alleges that Father sexually molested Son.

Child welfare investigators find no evidence to support those allegations and recommend that Father be awarded custody of Son.

Mother abducts Son.

And allegedly hides him in a hole in the wall – quite literally – at the house of her mother (Grandmother).

For two years.

Police say Son reacted to his release as though he had rarely if ever been outside of his hole in the wall, a small hidden crawlspace built into a wall in his grandmother’s house.

Mother is now charged with felony child abduction.

Grandmother is now charged with aiding and abetting.

A man who also lived in the Grandmother’s house is under arrest as well.

Son is now living with relatives pending further investigation of Father and evaluation of Son by child welfare workers.

Father maintains his innocence.

Read more in this ABC News article: Father Rejoices After Police Find Missing Son Alive, Hidden at Grandmother’s Home and this WSIL ABC TV 3 news article: UPDATE: Another Suspect Arrested in Kidnapping Case.

Boyfriend lives in New York.

Girlfriend lives in New Hampshire.

Boyfriend and Girlfriend “meet” on the internet.

Couple has two Daughters.

Relationship sours.

Custody battle in New Hampshire begins.

Girlfriend accuses Boyfriend of sexually abusing Daughters and of “mental delusions”.

Boyfriend accuses Girlfriend of sexually abusing Daughters and of “mental delusions”.

Neither police nor child protection agencies in either of their states have taken any action against Boyfriend (or, apparently, Girlfriend).

Boyfriend [erroneously] contends that this proves that Girfriend abused him with false accusations … alienating their Daughters from him and manipulating the legal system.

Court concludes that couple cannot “co-parent”.

Therefore, court awards Girlfriend primary custody and majority timesharing.

Court also awards Boyfriend “liberal” visitation.

Seeking primary custody himself, Boyfriend files appeal … and learns that New Hampshire law denies unmarried parents in child custody cases, among other folks in family cases, an automatic right of appeal.

So, Boyfriend seeks a discretionary appeal. And loses.

Now, regrouping, Boyfriend asks the trial court to reconsider its ruling, a little late in the game. He is now asserting that different appellate rules based on marital status of parents is discriminatory and, therefore, unconstitutional.

Whatever else, New Hampshire’s unusual appellate rules do at least have the virtue of trimming the appellate dockets considerably.

Read more in this Concord [NH] Monitor article: Unmarried couple’s custody case hits snag – No automatic appeal in fight.

The goal of the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction is to facilitate return of internationally abducted children to their home states within a brief six weeks.

Unfortunately, this is a far cry from the reality.

According to an article written from the British perspective, one-third of children abducted from the UK to other countries which have signed the Hague Convention are not returned within a year. Several countries typically require well over a year, or even a couple of years, for cases to run the course of their legal system.

Some countries which are parties to the Hague Convention reportedly never return children. Others rarely do so.

According to the article, Hague Convention signatory countries least likely to return children to the UK (and, presumably, anywhere else) are:

• Croatia

• Ecuador

• Honduras

• Mauritius

• Peru

• Serbia

• Sweden

• Zimbabwe

According to the article, even the US refused to return one-third of abducted children.

Of course, some cases of non-return by Hague Convention signatories may be the result of good faith differences in findings of fact or good faith differences in the application of the law of the Convention (particularly the exceptions) to the facts of the cases.

But, if this is the track record of the countries that agreed to the Hague Convention, the even poorer track records of non-party countries shouldn’t be surprising.

Read more in this [UK] Guardian article: Third of abducted children not returned home after a year.

Florida is a so-called “no-fault” divorce state. Actually, at this point in time, so is every other state in the union.

Except, of course, New York state. The lone holdout requiring fault for divorce.

Many attorneys and mediators have worked for years toward changing New York’s divorce law.

But with no success to date.

Leaving it to divorce litigants to discover and prove legal fault.

One commentator points out that the added costs to spouses and the extra clogging of the New York courts with courtroom fault-dramas are just too much in these recession-plagued times.

Who knows? Maybe this will be the year New York’s divorce law changes.

Read more in this New York Times editorial: New York’s Antique Divorce Law.

Mother and Father are divorced.

Child welfare agencies in two states are familiar with the family.

Mother is initially awarded custody of their three Children.

Later, Mother loses custody of Children and Father is awarded custody of Children.

Mother is allowed visitation supervised by child welfare personnel at the child welfare agency’s facilities.

Father has other children from other relationships. Father’s visitation with them is reportedly restricted and he was allegedly arrested for injuring one of his other children previously.

While Children are in Father’s care, Father allegedly gets drunk while “playing” with a gun … on Christmas Eve.

All three Children are present at this time, including one-year old Baby.

Father’s gun goes off, shooting one of the Children in the head and killing her.

One of the other Children dials 911, not Father.

Father is arrested for manslaughter, endangering a child and tampering with evidence … and released on bail.

Mother’s counsel seeks to have the surviving Children placed into Mother’s care. Father’s counsel seeks to have the surviving Children placed into Father’s care.

Instead, the Court orders that Father have no contact with the two surviving Children for the time being, that Mother continue to be restricted to supervised visitation, and that neither parent have access to Children’s school.

Children are in foster care.

Read more in this Denton [TX] news article: Father accused in girl’s shooting can’t see children.

Ex-Husband and Ex-Wife divorced in the early 1990s.

Ex-Husband is a very, very wealthy man who founded a successful investment company during his divorce from Ex-Wife.

Ex-Wife sues Ex-Husband in a civil lawsuit for claimed racketeering. More specifically, allegedly:

• hiding assets from Ex-Wife and the family court during their divorce
• filing papers with the court that were false
• fraud and
• insider trading.

Ex-Wife’s first lawyer dismissed her suit shortly after it was filed, apparently due to a falling out between him and his client. But Ex-Wife plans to re-file through new counsel.

The original actions reportedly sought $300 million.

Read more in

• this BusinessWeek article: Patricia Cohen to Again Sue Ex-Spouse, SAC’s Founder (Update2) and
• this BusinessWeek article: SAC Capital Founder Cohen’s Ex-Wife Drops Lawsuit (Update3) and
• this Business Insider article: Ex-Wife: Stevie Cohen Confessed To Insider Trading In The 80s.

There’s a relatively easy way and a potentially very hard way to collect a spouse’s share of the other spouse’s pension awarded in a divorce.

The hard way in many cases is to passively wait for the ex-spouse to send it. Perhaps to e-mail, call or text message the ex.

When things get bad enough (arrears mount), to file a motion for contempt.

Time-consuming, costly and aggravating.

Then there’s the easier way.

To have the pension plan administrator just send it directly to the spouse awarded a share.

No begging, arguing, threatening or waiting.

The spouse on the plan never gets their hands on the money and has no opportunity to interfere with collection.

What wondrous mechanism accomplishes this?

Well, in Florida, former spouses receiving checks directly from their ex’s pension plan administrator know they owe their thanks to a “QDRO“, or a Qualified Domestic Relations Order (and the lawyer who advised getting it).

A QDRO (pronounced “quad-ro”) is a nifty order that a judge signs as part of the divorce.

Although QDROs can be somewhat complex and may cost some money, for the spouse who is not directly on the pension plan, the return on investment can be huge … and the other spouse may well be required to bear the associated expenses.

To appreciate what the big deal is about a QDRO, you’d probably have to talk to someone living in one of the five states that do not recognize QDROs.

Such as Kentucky.

One woman, waiting for her share of her husband’s pension benefits, has instead seen him jailed twice rather than send her her court-ordered share. And still she only receives her share long enough for him to “get out of jail”.

But Kentucky legislators are working on implementing (sadly, reinstating) recognition of QDROs in Kentucky.

Read more in this [Louisville, KY] Courier-Journal article: Bill aims to simplify pension payments.