Multiple Sclerosis Awareness Week was March 12th through March 18th.

What does that have to do with divorce law? Child custody law? Domestic violence law?

By chance, two of the candidates currently seeking the presidency are or have been married to women diagnosed with multiple sclerosis.

One of the candidates reportedly divorced his wife because of her diagnosis with multiple sclerosis.

Despite all the hoopla and backlash over his alleged conduct, as I posted in Warning to Seriously Ill Women: Be Prepared to Be Divorced … Now, the divorce rate among couples where the wife receives a serious diagnosis, such as multiple sclerosis, is 20.8 percent, as compared to the general population’s divorce rate of 11.6 percent.

In general, multiple sclerosis tends to strike women in their twenties to forties. In other words, their prime years for childbearing and childrearing and … for romantic breakups – resulting in child custody disputes.

That is how I came to be introduced to multiple sclerosis. And with each additional case I have handled where multiple sclerosis was a factor, my awareness and knowledge of multiple sclerosis has grown, almost exponentially, and on multiple levels.

Multiple sclerosis, like any serious chronic illness or potentially disabling condition, can sometimes resemble an intervening third party in a divorce case and/or child custody case.

And multiple sclerosis, like any chronic illness or potentially disabling condition, can potentially impact outcomes in family court cases for parental responsibility or child custody, timesharing and visitation, child support, spousal support and, possibly, even property division.

How and how much depends upon which family member is afflicted, and the precise nature, severity and impact of the condition in the particular individual.

And multiple sclerosis, like all chronic illnesses and potentially disabling conditions, can ravage intact families and childless couples breaking up as well.

Please raise your awareness of multiple sclerosis by reading more in this press release: MS Awareness Week March 12 – 18, 2012 and in this announcement in the South Charlotte [NC] News.