Arizona Grandfather has cared for Grandchildren for extended periods of time.

Now Mother apparently is seeking custody of Grandchildren through the family courts.

After a hearing, before family members leave the family courthouse, Grandfather allegedly shoots Mother, Grandmother and Aunt. Mother and Grandmother died.

For those who might imagine that the grass is greener somewhere else, Grandfather has only a few traffic tickets on his record and this happened at a family courthouse in a “rural” area of Arizona.

Grandfather lives in a town with a population of roughly … 5,000.

Read more in this Yahoo news article by way of Associated Press: Authorities: Courthouse gunman was in dispute over grandkids.

Ten year old Girl is by all accounts one heck of a golfer, with a bright professional future and a great shot at a full scholarship for college.

At least, until a Virginia family court judge ruled that Girl cannot compete professionally for the next year.

And cannot play for more than five hours per week for the next year.

And cannot receive coaching by a pro for the next year.

Why is some judge running Girl’s life for her?

Because this ten year old’s parents are embroiled in a custody battle over her. For the past seven of her ten years.

Girl’s Father introduced her to the game. And plays the sport with her. And is her main coach.

But Girl’s Mother has sole legal and physical custody of Girl.

And Father has been ordered to take anger management classes.

But Father isn’t the only one angry over the judge’s ruling.

The entire golf community seems positively outraged.

Of course, what nobody knows, other than Mother and Father and the family court judge, are the factors that went into the judge’s ruling.

One reported consequence of the ruling is that Father has less timesharing with Girl.

The bottom line is that whether someone else would agree or disagree with the judge’s reasoning, it is almost certain that the ruling was not arbitrary.

Read more in

• this ABC News article: 10-Year-Old Golf Prodigy Ordered to Stop Playing Tournaments Amid Parents’ Custody Battle
• this Loudoun Now news article: Loudoun Judge Bars 10-year-old Golfer from Competing and
• this UK Daily Mail news article: Judge bars ten-year-old golf prodigy who won 23 tournaments in the last two years from competing as her parents continue seven-year custody battle

Boyfriend and Girlfriend have two children together, over the course of eleven years together.

Their relationship was reportedly rocky though.

Girlfriend was hospitalized several times, allegedly as a result of physical abuse by Boyfriend.

But Girlfriend was also hospitalized on other occasions, for mental health issues.

Were the mental health hospitalizations the result of alleged abuse by Boyfriend as well?

It seems the prosecuting agency in Minnesota just might argue that.

Because prosecutors there have charged Boyfriend with murder and manslaughter, as well as stalking, following Girlfriend’s tragic death by … suicide.

The prosecution’s inventive theory is that Boyfriend’s alleged psychological and physical abuse, in effect, drove Girlfriend to commit suicide … a few days after she signed herself out of a mental health facility.

The charges are novel and bold, undoubtedly well-intentioned and undeniably policy-driven.

But, politics aside, it’s hard to imagine this case going anywhere. Since criminal convictions require proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Read more in this People magazine article: Man Charged with Murder After His Ex-Girlfriend Commits Suicide to ‘Escape the Relationship’ in Rare Case, Says Prosecutor

Annulment is more like the spoonful of sugar going down than the spoonful of medicine.

Everyone wants it. Typically, just to avoid stigma of divorce, real or imagined.

But just a handful of cases actually meet the fairly strict and narrow criteria for eligibility for annulment. So, despite strong interest in them, we can rarely justify filing them.

In general, the best candidates for annulment are very short-lived marriages that were never consummated or where the couple stopped cohabiting immediately upon learning of the defect or fraud that invalidates or threats the validity of the marriage.

Still, not everyone – eligible or not – is deterred from pursuing an annulment …

Canadian heiresses can likely bear the cost of the potential false start and indulge their whim … especially when the financial stakes are high.

Take this food industry Heiress’ example.

She, like her sibling, entered prenuptial agreements at the insistence of their father, the company’s founder.

The agreement apparently established a modest fixed sum of parting gift property upon breakdown of the marriage.

In this case, $5 million. Not really such a large sum in the context of this family’s wealth.

But heiress simply doesn’t want her husband to walk away with even that.

So, throwing caution to the wind, Heiress files for annulment.

Because if her marriage is held to be void from the get-go, there won’t be any property division as there would be in a divorce.

Is $5 million worth the risk of wasting her nominal annulment filing fee … and enduring some ridicule?

Could be.

So she’s giving it the old college try.

Doing her best to paint her husband as a fraud who duped her into the marriage.

Read more in:

• this Canadian National Post article: Annulments are rare and tricky to get. So why would a McCain heiress in an acrimonious split file for one? and
• this Winnipeg Sun article: ‘Vengeful’ McCain heiress claims ‘media whore’ husband would ‘unjustly’ get $5M in divorce

More than a year ago, a prominent physician and medical school professor drew a new line in the sand, and denounced cigarette smoking routinely around children as nothing less than child abuse. He urged the medical community to take bold action to stamp out the pediatric health crisis resulting from second-hand smoke.

Fast forward a year. The place is the conference of the International Society for Family Law. Where some leading family law attorneys have taken up the gauntlet.

They are advancing legislative proposals to

• require emergency room doctors to report as child abusers parents of children in respiratory distress who are suspected of having smoked around their children
• deny custody of children to parents who smoke around their children and remove custody of children from parents who smoke around their kids
• ban foster parents from smoking around their foster children and
• punish anyone for smoking in a car with children.

Sound harsh? Unreasonable?

According to the New York Times, more than 6,000 American children die annually as a result of their parents’ smoking, and still more children suffer more than five million serious diagnoses from it as well.

Even without new or different legislation, with the right evidence placed before the right judge about the right child with the right health issues, cigarette smoking certainly may be a consideration in both custody and timesharing rulings.

Read more in:

1. this Science Daily News article: Repeated exposure of children to secondhand smoke is child abuse, expert argues
2. this ValueWalk article: Smokers Should Lose Child Custody – Intl Family Law Conf.

A fairly small survey of at least middle-aged divorcees in the UK indicates that one third of marital residences get sold to third parties. Half the couples were long-term marrieds who had become empty-nesters and ended up downsizing.

Interestingly, some divorcing couples opted to share certain property after their divorces, including family pets.

Not surprisingly, women were more likely than men to report that they were less well off financially after their divorces. Whatever the financial impact of their divorces though, more than half of the surveyed divorcees reported being happier following their divorce.

The survey was conducted by a financial institution and is based on subjective self-reporting, except perhaps for the mortgage payoff and home sales data. It is worth noting that some of the couples surveyed were still in the midst of their divorce and it was not indicated for how long the other couples may have been divorced.

Read more in this UK Telegraph article: Family home sold in a third of ‘silver’ divorces.

Husband and Wife marry. Have Children. Divorce.

Fast forward two decades. Children are married.

Are Children more likely to divorce than any other couple?

Perhaps not.

Past studies have suggested that children of divorce are more likely to divorce themselves.

But drilling down through the data more meticulously suggests that high conflict in the family (whether or not it culminates in divorce) is actually a better predictor of divorce in the next generation.

Read more in this Tech Insider article: One parent behavior may affect kids of divorce more than divorce itself.

Traditional scenario. Husband and Wife marry, then have children. If Husband and Wife later decide to divorce, custody issues must be resolved.

Modern, increasingly common, scenario. Husbands and wives create and store frozen embryos due to fertility concerns. If husbands and wives later decide to divorce while they still have unborn embryos in storage, the fate of the embryos must be resolved.

Which may be every bit as contentious as custody of already-living children.

One high profile divorcing couple recently reached an agreement to destroy their frozen embryos.

But another is still fighting the good fight well over a year now.

Although this is hardly the first thing that comes to mind in the context of a prenuptial agreement or a postnuptial agreement, this is actually an excellent candidate for an agreement before the first embryo is frozen.

Read more in this

• this TMZ article: Derek Fisher Divorce – Destroying Frozen Embryos … After Nasty Split and
• this Latina article: Months Later, Sofia Vergara & Nick Loeb’s Frozen Embryo Battle Continues to Rage On.

Italian Husband and Wife have Daughter together.

Husband and Wife divorce.

Italian family court orders Husband to pay Wife child support of US $300-odd per month.

Husband is a pizza baker.

Husband’s business is off.

Husband can’t afford to pay his court-ordered child support.

But Husband has an idea.

He can bake pizzas for Daughter and Wife. A lot of them. US $300-odd worth of pizzas.

So that’s what Husband does.

Wife takes Husband to court.

But the Italian family court sides with Husband, and credits Husband with the dollar equivalent of the pizzas Husband gives Wife and Daughter.

This is a very questionable ruling.

The Italian family court is clearly sympathetic to the Husband, who apparently can no longer afford the cash amount of the previously ordered support.

Technically, Husband should have filed a modification action to reduce the amount of support he must pay based upon his changed circumstances.

The problem with the Italian family court’s compassionate (toward Husband) ruling is that, beyond the amount of pizza that Wife and Daughter would / could actually consume themselves, it is of no practical value whatsoever to Wife and Daughter.

The purpose of child support is to provide funds for the purchase of things for the child, including clothing and housing.

Unfortunately, except in a barter society, neither stores nor landlords or mortgage lenders accept payment in pizza.

If Wife appeals, unless Italian family law is radically different from that in the US, the family court ruling is going to be reversed. Or at least modified so that only a portion of child support can be paid in pizza, called “in kind”.

Read more in:

About half of the divorces in France are what we call uncontested. In other words, the husband and wife reach agreement on everything from the get-go.

The French government now wants to send them on their way faster and save family court judges time for the contested cases where they are most needed.

Toward that end, court costs will only be approximately US $50 and no court hearings will be required.

But each spouse will still have to have an attorney.

Further, this simplified “judge-free” option is withdrawn “if a child requests to be heard by a magistrate”.

Some government officials would go further and eliminate the no hearing option in any case where the divorcing couple has minor children.

Every jurisdiction chooses its own lines in the sand. Time will tell whether France has chosen well.

Southeast Florida still requires at least an abbreviated hearing in all cases.

Read more in

1. this Mashable article:France set to approve divorce by mutual consent without a judge
2. this Findlaw / Associated Press article: France’s govt wants to allow divorce by mutual consent
3. this Findlaw / Associated Press article: France’s government wants to allow divorce without a judge.