Michigan family court awards primary custody of Children to Mother.

Father reportedly keeps Children beyond his allowed visitation and timesharing … and makes off with Children to Canada.

When captured by law enforcement authorities, Father contends that Mother is abusive toward Children and he is only trying to protect Children from Mother.

Father is charged with unlawful retention of the Children by a parent.

And the Children are returned to Mother’s care as originally court-ordered.

At trial, the Children’s testimony does not sound as though it corroborates Father’s version of events.

The jury cannot reach a unanimous verdict and a second trial is scheduled.

Read more in

• this Livingston [MI] Daily news article: Court Docket: Hung jury declared in parental kidnap case

• this Livingston [MI] Daily news article: No verdict yet in kidnap case

• this Livingston [MI] Daily news article: Trial begins Monday for father accused of parental kidnapping

Arizona Wife obtains domestic violence restraining order of protection against Husband.

Wife divorces Husband, who is now seventy-three years old, in 2008.

Husband and Wife’s divorce is reportedly contentious.

Three years later, Husband allegedly murders Wife, Wife’s attorney and several other people … and then commits suicide. Husband also wounds a friend of Wife’s, who survives.

According to law enforcement authorities, “these victims were targeted.”

Husband was reportedly divorced four times prior to his marriage to Wife.

Read more in this New York Times article: Six Dead in Southern Arizona Shooting, Including Gunman’s Ex-Wife and Her Lawyer and this Arizona Republic article: Yuma shootings: Slain victims identified; includes gunman’s ex-wife.

Husband, a partner at a large and prestigious New York law firm, and Wife, also an attorney, divorced in 2006. The couple had marital assets valued at $13 million at the time of their divorce.

Among their assets, the couple had invested several million dollars with Bernie Madoff. Husband opted to keep the Madoff account and other assets, so Husband wrote Wife a check as an equalization payment. In other words, so that Wife ended up with half of the value of the marital assets.

After the divorce, Husband invested additional money with Bernie Madoff.

Fast forward two years. Madoff is exposed for running a Ponzi scheme.

As things turned out, Husband figures he got the short end of the divorce stick. And that doesn’t sit right.

Husband wants to recoup his losses. So he sues …

Wife. Arguing, interestingly and creatively, that both Husband and Wife overestimated the value of their Madoff investments, so the equalization payment Husband made to Wife was larger than it should have been and …. should be refunded in part.

The New York family court dismissed Husband’s claim at trial. After all, as a matter of policy, divorce settlements are supposed to be final – unless, among a few narrow exceptions, one spouse commits fraud on the other.

There is no suggestion by Husband that Wife engaged in any fraud or nondisclosure. If anyone did, it was Bernie Madoff.

Husband’s law firm is representing him without charge, so … Husband appeals the family court’s ruling at trial.

On appeal, an intermediate appellate court reinstated Husband’s claim based on the contract law doctrine of “mutual mistake”. And yes, although most people probably don’t think of it that way, a marital settlement agreement is a contract.

Depending on the ultimate outcome of this case, not only might numerous divorce cases be revisited but also even more numerous contract disputes.

Read more in this Yahoo News Lookout piece: Citing Madoff fraud, lawyer wants divorce deal do-over and this New York Times article: Madoff Victim Seeks Divorce Do-Over.

Michigan Father allegedly owes child support.

$215,000 worth in fact.

For five different children with five different mothers.

And now Father is under arrest on five separate felony counts of nonsupport of children.

Read more in this Detroit Free Press news article: Detroit dad who owed more than $200K in child support involving 5 families arrested.

Once upon a time, divorce was caused by things like one spouse’s affairs … with other people.

But times have changed, thanks, in large part, to technology.

A newly released study, perhaps not conducted with strict scientific rigor, finds that a whopping fifteen percent of divorces are caused by one spouse’s … compulsion for video gaming.

That represents a ten percent escalation in just one year.

The spike is speculated to be the fallout of the recession, specifically high unemployment and reduced outside-entertainment budgets.

Or of a veritable addiction, allegedly more powerful than the drug cocaine.

Particular games taking the blame are reportedly World of Warcraft, Call of Duty and Halo.

At the heart of the matter is the nongaming spouse’s belief that the gaming spouse cares more about their gaming than their spouse.

Video gamers defend their hobby and point to preexisting relationship problems that may stimulate excessive gaming.

In other relatively recent studies, virtual cheating through social networking websites, such as FaceBook, has also been blamed for a statistically significantly percentage of divorces. See my previous post, That Cheatin’ Internet Social Network.

Read more in this [Salt Lake City] Deseret News article: Video-game addiction blamed for 15 percent of divorces and this [UK] Daily Mail article: Video games being blamed for divorce as men ‘prefer World of Warcraft to their wives’.

Kentucky Wife cheats on her husband. Wife gets pregnant and has Baby.

Wife’s Boyfriend seeks parental rights and responsibilities, including timesharing and visitation with Baby.

Under long-settled legal precedents, where a mother’s marriage is intact, in the eyes of the law, the mother’s husband is (conclusively) presumed to be the father of the mother’s child.

The Kentucky Supreme Court overturns that precedent in favor of a more scientific and pragmatic approach looking to DNA testing rather than blind rules of law.

Read more in this Wall Street Journal piece: Kentucky Supreme Court Wades into Extramarital Affairs and this Courier-Journal article: Kentucky court says fathers of children conceived during affairs have parental rights.

Each year, 200,000 children in the US are abducted by relatives.

Last year, two thousand children were abducted into and out of the US.

These and similar statistics are only on the rise.

The Office of Children’s Issues in the Department of State is responsible for resolving child custody jurisdiction cases under the Hague Convention on the Civil Aspects of International Child Abduction.

Read more in this Briefing on National Missing Children’s Day.

Tennessee Husband and Wife have three Children together.

Husband and Wife divorce.

Husband is court-ordered to pay child support for Children, including thirteen percent of his overtime pay.

Husband’s employer offers its employees the option of receiving compensatory time off for overtime in lieu of overtime pay.

And Husband has opted to forego overtime pay for compensatory time off.

Wife feels that Husband’s election is an effort to circumvent court-ordered child support.

So Wife reports Husband to her local district attorney’s office, which is responsible for enforcing child support where she lives in Tennessee.

And the district attorney’s office advises Wife that Husband is not violating the law … or the court child support order by electing to take compensatory time off instead of overtime pay.

Certainly, it is evident that Husband’s election is not illegal.

But, just as certainly, Husband’s election to take compensatory time off in lieu of overtime pay does violate the spirit and intent of the court order for child support.

Would the outcome be different if the child support court order specifically addressed the possibility of Husband electing to take compensatory time off instead of overtime pay, perhaps by expressly imputing to Husband his voluntarily foregone income and explicitly requiring him to pay child support on it? Wife must be wondering.

Read more in this [Nashville] WSMV NBC 4 TV news article: Mom: Dad Avoids Child Support By Choosing Comp Time.

The most recent census reveals that more and more people live alone.

For example, all but one of Colorado’s counties saw an increase in the percentage of their population which is living alone.

Statewide, twenty-eight percent of households are occupied by a single person. In Denver, more than a whopping forty percent of households are occupied by a single individual.

The rate of growth of single occupant residences outstripped growth in households consisting of married couples, families with minor children and even cohabitants, romantic and not.

Nor is Colorado unique. Quite the contrary, it mirrors the nation.

Whether due to death of a spouse, divorce, delayed marriage or a choice not to marry, single-occupant households are clearly a rising trend throughout the US.

Read more in this Denver Post article: 2010 Census: Colorado households of one have grown in past decade.

Have a so-called smartphone? Then, it now seems, you probably don’t have too many secrets from your cell phone service provider.

Probably right down to precisely where you are at pretty much any particular moment. All of them. All the time.

And it’s all reportedly saved in files.

Just waiting for subpoenas to be served.

So the information can be used against you in, among other places, a divorce case or a child custody case in family court.

With, potentially, great impact on your case, and your life.

Something to keep in mind next time you reach for your cell phone.

Read more in this The Mark piece: The Spy in Your Pocket – [Q&A] Cell phones’ ability to track their users’ movements in detail is a threat to privacy..