Family Attorney

Riccardo Rainieri and Jasmine divorcing after 10 years of marriage, but they agree on at least one thing: you must keep in mind, 12-year-old the best interests of Jade.

“Jade should not suffer because his mother, and I can things do not work,” says Riccardo, lives in New York City’s East Side.

He worked and Jasmine an agreement on custody and visitation rights for their Golden Retriever.

Legally, the animals are private property. So in the case of divorce, a judge to rule on custody is not taken into account as to the decision that the grill or the Barcalounger.

Circuit Court Judge Amy Williams, shall preside over the events of family, in Pinellas County, said, it has increased five issues of custody since 2002. She noted, for the care of dogs, cats, horses, a pig - and even an aquarium.

“When it comes to pets, there is no legal equivalent custody child, it is best if the couple to work these issues in court,” she says. “Otherwise, those that, ultimately, five to a fortune. ”

Not all cases are friendly

In Rainieris an agreement in May was easier to Jade diagnosed with cancer. The couple has put aside their differences to give their pet love and she needed assistance during treatment.

But many couples have a difficult time of it. In the Midwest, a woman in the middle of the calls divorce, the family has vagué cats. Your suspect soon ex-husband to hire a detective to their tails, and investigators from the video contained the woman at home with cats. The man was still being tried in court and for joint custody.

A divorcing duo Arizona had urged the judge to write their orders during recent joint custody of the children, cats and hamsters.

Even the famous battle about pets. Actress Kirsten Dunst and ex-lovers Jake Gyllenhaal, when she fought for in the past year about their German shepherd, Lovey.

This is why more and more couples are fighting like cats and dogs in the family pet? Look at the results of a national survey five owner in the year 2004 by the American Animal Hospital Association:

• 93% of respondents said they would risk their lives for their pets.

• 83 percent of dog owners describes himself as a mom or dad.

• Nearly half of five images taken in their portfolios.

Some courts weigh the interests of animals

This is good news for animals caught in disintegration.

“The courts are beginning to look a rigorous analysis of the property in the best interest of the animal to decide which party is entitled to custody,” Joyce cabinetry, the founder and director of the Animal Legal Defense Fund, wrote in an article at the insistence of lawyers for more road custody Five cases.

Although custody is not decided in which only the five best interest, Williams said, the Court finds that in the case of the distribution of material goods and values. She remembers handing over the Golden Retriever of the family, a woman, because the husband had bought it as an incentive for them to remain on an empty stomach to combat alcoholism and drug addiction.

The man said the dog was his property because he bought it. However, the woman had cared for the dog almost exclusively. And she had not had an alcoholic drink in seven years.

When you are in a fight for the custody of an animal, remember that animals are concerned, as many children under the stress of disintegration. Check signs of fear, uncertainty and confusion. Remember that the best of their interests in front of you.

The Animal Legal Defense Fund (aldf.org) advises divorcing breeder, we get a lawyer for help in the development of an approach that seeks the best interest of five.

Gathering information on the validation or proof of ownership of primary care or person. Ask your lawyer on alternative dispute resolution, such as mediation or conciliation.

Literally hundreds of thousands of people get married each year - most of them are happy, when they decide to marry, and many are convinced that they are satisfied. Marriage Is HUGE business. Thousands are spent for a much-needed (if glitzed-), the rite of transition - and couples their vows commitment to the “us". They maintain people and “a couple". This does not really know what they have or are… is irrevocable.

And then, after a while, many still do not understand the happiness they thought it expects. Misunderstandings set in a person who is awake, it is not the person that you can imagine, to the former. Anyway, it’s a surprise. Depending on the age, education and income, 40-50% to lay decode the marriage and look ahead to a new w.

Other surprises await you!

Many couples have children in the years between “me” and “I do not know.” “We” is now a family. And yet, if looms divorce, it is not a game, no budget, no insurance, no simple solution. Chaos reigns. Misery is the result.

This should be seen as a national problem, but that’s not all. Could it be a disease that NIH would be putting out warnings everywhere! But also because it is common practice, it is not considered an unacceptable situation in desperate need of serious reform. Why divorce seem suspended in the vicinity of the mark by 50%? (And why there are so many married couples with children in the legal system?) Maybe because, despite the figures, most people are still waiting for the dream to come, and maybe they want children like them and are shocked, as it’s even more difficult after the children. Who knows? Nobody seems willing to look beneath the surface, to find out.

But we know and can show that all cross America, hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent and divorces (just under) are available on paternity cases. Only simple cases, where the legal theory of combat ends with the arrest cost several thousand. (The father of numerous cases of people without lawyers and they are hiding a problem with a major impact on children. The cost of these coming because of the future.)

The case may be inelegant literally bankrupt parent, and destroying lives and families. (Few seem to recognize that the case is so long, until it contains no more minor children. If you have children after divorce, as you being able to live together - a decision Justice - Big Brother is watching you!)

However, few people to fight, after the judgement. This is how the “jurisprudence", and sometimes even new. (Think Barry Bonds). In each of these cases, the new law (ie if the grandparents can visitation rights is denied if the parents may or may not be achieved if same-sex couples, both parents and, if you are not, if the child is Enough support… the list goes on.) Hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent. College Study amounts wasted. All this is the result of a dispute over what is happening with the family. But what I am most afraid of is that all this on the basis of a delusion that everyone judge (with hundreds of cases and Tunnel Vision) can know what is best for the child YOU !

Economic paradox at the end with the men feel deceived - and women in poverty. Men money to the women, they did not over all “quid pro quo” for women and men remain in office for which they would no longer observe - or perhaps reticent. The irrevocable vows of marriage are not as easy to finish, and such an exchange have a steep cost psycho-spiritual.

Alas, even in cases where potential revenues are roughly equal, families are torn - and children are always the innocent spectators. It is obvious - but the system is blind. The impact on the lives of children ranging from the mission, “learning” adults that relationships are temporary. And some children are increasingly resolved in any conflict so healthy.

Many people agree that those affected by divorce are angry, hostile, and a “divorce trance. Advocates of ugliness, particularly in the judicial procedures (and chancelleries) as evidence. Regrettably, people, vows to stay away from not receiving the freedom of the press, they still have the floor, the tranquillity of their successes. (But see “Breaking Apart, A Memoir of Divorce” by Wendy Swallow an exception to the rule .)

NEW FLASH! All Equal NON divorce above. There are new opportunities! The truth is that the ugliness of most divorce cases, is replaced by a system assumes that there, and then it strengthens increasingly totally ignored the family. Proceedings truth, it is assumed that the clash of conflicting viewpoints. This can be when assessing the work of recent events - but marriage, and it is at the end, who do not possess the latest developments. They are informed about the future of the family, a company that will not end there, in most divorces. Is there a solution? Yes!

The path to remain, the battle is the use of “ADR” - “Appropriate Dispute Resolution.” It could be, mediation, ideal for couples in full agreement on how they want their families after divorce, but who needs expert help with the “how". But for many, if not most, couples who need help, many aspects of the reorganization of the family - financial, emotional and legal. This will be possible only in “Collaborative Divorce,” or, in some cases, into personal life judge. (The “Hollywood” model). Collaborative Law, the newest and most modern “ADR” option was adopted on the Today Show and Los Angeles’ Talk of the City.

Cooperation has recently begun to attract media attention to get through a few brave souls who were willing to “go public". Most families of judges are enthusiastic, and some courts are researching pairs of letters recommends “ADR” and the words Collaborative Practice. (Of course, it is usually too late by the time someone has lodged with the court, so that the letters are probably unnecessary - but they show a growing recognition that the courts are not for everyone .)

Pamela Anderson, who is best known for his role as the star of Baywatch, is divorced from her husband, Rick Salomon.

Pamela Anderson, 40, said that fraud and why the couple to the end of their marriage, according to papers filed in Los Angeles.

Rick Salomon, infamous for his part in a video express his girlfriend at the time, Paris Hilton, with this case, the appropriate framework for seeking divorce.

Pamela Anderson and Rick Salomon had married in October of last year, but they separated only eight weeks later.

In December, Pamela Anderson on its website that Rick Solomon, and has been “working, things", but even for a divorce, in the same month.

Pamela Anderson, formerly married to Kid Rock and Rock Stars Tommy Lee, had stated that they are “irreconcilable differences” between her and Rick Salomon.

This relates to the killing of his three young children with a father, Montgomery County, March 30 recalls the murder of another Maryland father of her three children, his ex-wife and, most recently, Thanksgiving itself.

Both incidents were related to the conflict High-custody battles. They are almost always alone custody battles and fights, in which each parent, the struggle for mainstream, the main force in the lives of their children after divorce.

In this case, only custody, each parent of the image itself better than parents, and whether it can afford, rents lawyers and the judge entrusted to show why he or she alone is in custody. The fighting may continue for months or years, and the emotional and psychological impact of the family continues to grow more attenuated, the struggle continues. I am a lawyer and author for children, and I talked to thousands of families and many professionals on the mental health of the country in the 23 years during which I assumed leadership of the Children’s Rights Council, which has its headquarters in Maryland. Telephone 301/459-1220 www.CRCkids.org

Dr. Rona Fields, a prominent Washington, DC, psychologist working with CRC, agreed with these sentiments, and is also available for an interview at your disposal. Telephone 202/882-8833.

Most countries have the right to joint custody for 95 per cent of parents who are fit. Maryland is the only one of 13 states joining in preference to joint custody, it is, indeed, the highest promotion Maryland conflict custody battles

Does this mean that we are in favour of joint custody to the father of her child killed? Absolutely not. If one can say in advance that she would have done heinous crimes, we would be no contact with children - and he was recommended for psychiatric care. But predictions are difficult, because in such cases, it is recommended that joint custody of the standard, and try to push high necessary in cases of conflict, mediation, consulting and training and parents. Anything to demilitarize divorce, and to reduce the conflict.

OTTAWA - Family Court, lawyers dismayed to learn that the government and opposition MPs have called recently a bill by the House of Commons, touches the heart of Justice - the courts.

“What is of more fundamental importance to our system, our democracy, such as access to justice? Without such a system, we really anarchy, “says Alfred Mamo.
You say that the new government, with the eyes of the opposition, has no interest in a confrontation with a “crisis", the Family Courts in hand, especially in Ontario.

But Liberal Senator George Baker tells Law Times, the Senate, the bill deserves attention, and it could “month” and witnesses for the hearing of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee.

Bill C-31, there is, for a modest sum of 20 judges appointed senior federal courts, in the award of all 10 provinces and territories. It is not even a drop in the ocean compared to the 984 existing complement of judges in the superior courts, lawyers say.

Unlike a bill, 2005 liberals have explicitly added to the courtyard of the family 27 new judges, the law of the Conservative Party not to mention family court and, instead of September, we heard 20 new posts for the bank by a court, the government is to regulate the establishment, long aboriginal Country.

The fact that 13 new posts for a judicial system already bursting at the seams, especially in Ontario.
The bill only an hour’s debate, as they sailed through the Commons in January.

Over time, the house hochgeschossen the Senate on March 14, she received only one hour of the study Commons Committee on Justice. The only witnesses were by the government: the minister of justice Rob Nicholson, Catherine McKinnon, ’s Counsel of the Department of Justice, Judith Bell, another adviser David Justice and nearby judicial affairs adviser.

To the disappointment of Alfred Mamo, London, Ont. Lawyer, conducted a major study in the last year in Ontario’s family courts, the bill is not specific provision for the appointment of judges to family courts.
Mamo still under consideration of the report of the Attorney General Chris Bentley, invites the federal government and the province of Ontario and head of the judiciary hammer, a “crisis management plan imminent court to face shortages in the family Tribunal.

Mamo Law Times says the shortage is particularly acute, and the family courts are “critical sub-funds” in urban centres, swelling, which derive from Whitby-Oshawa to Barrie, adding that Ottawa alone needs at least three to four additional judges for his family Court of Justice.

He said that the shortage is the creation of two classes of the system - many parents with the option to expensive private place of mediation and conciliation Civil Service Tribunal - because of the delay in implementing front of a judge.

“Many cases are not billing because they think it’s a just result, and not because they think it is a question of the dissolution of precaution, but simply to do it, they can simply not continue lasting into the system “said Mamo.

“What happened, people want senior practitioners, costs $ 250, $ 400, $ 500 per hour to mediation,” he says. “Courts are an institution of justice,” says - he said. “access to justice, access to justice, good, without delay, at a lower cost and with judges who have a thorough knowledge on the bench.”

Estranged Parents who can not keep up, it is necessary that prices remain, in a court on legal aid or represented, hooves, the Court finds that some time before help customers who represent themselves .
Gerald Yemensky, a lawyer and family in Ottawa, specializes in the placement corresponds family court is urgently needed in the nature of the attention of federal Bill not to spend.

“I can tell you that the system is broken,” says Yemensky Law Times.
He says, it may be alienated parents up to six weeks only to the implementation of the phase of the event of the conference in Ottawa.

If you had a relatively urgent, we say, for example, that someone has left with the children, but they are still in the city, they are not only the location and the other parent to see, it can be two or three months At a minimum before this matter was raised, before reaching judges, “he said. “For a process, there could be at least a few years.”

Mamo said, he was surprised at the speed with which the judges sailed through the bill, and he wondered why the government has no counsel to decide how the legal system should be strengthened complementary.

“Everybody is afraid of grinding figures, and I am not sure why,” he says. “What is of more fundamental importance to our system, our democracy, such as access to Justice? Without this system, we really anarchy. “
He said that the government has failed to spread on helping those who need it most - children of broken marriages.

“The reality is that when you consider the number of children separated families, and they are present in all innocent, we need a system that is good for them and their parents must be a way to solve questions, “he says.

Baker tells Law Times senators are cautious when they legislation, hastily Commons without control, adding laws, the Senate and the Committee on Constitutional Affairs will probably invite all provincial attorneys general at the hearings, and “someone who wants to come. ”

Mamo said he believes that the federal government ignored the family court, because the rainbow-conservative elements in the prime minister, Stephen Harper’s party, who do not want a divorce.

“You have really no interest in the promotion of the family [court] agenda. It is quite obvious,” he says. “They want what they see as” the traditional family remains intact ” he says.
“But you can not ignore [divorce], it is a reality of the 21st century.”

HAGERSTOWN - Eliza Rose with their life situation.

The toilet is running steadily, the neighbours of floor stomps up the stairs at all hours, railing is rusted and broken, and the owner has not done that at all - ie until they crashed unexpectedly, and, over dinner, nearly At a plumber.

Its owner, Susan, with a shrugging of shoulders angry.

“That’s what I always hear, as it has attracted,” said Susan. “I never had a tenant, the numerous complaints.”

Seth Ofosu, 15, listens patiently.

“It seems to me it is important that the responsibility for both of you,” he says, and women. Within an hour, she expressed her willingness to pay Eliza with a value of two months of the end of the rental Susan Monday and plans for the piping in the morning.

It is a working day for the Washington County Community Mediation Center mediators - or, in this case, the mediators of higher education.

The landlord-tenant, was part of a scenario of role play, exercises Sunday, limited to six days of the course of mediation for 21 volunteers to facilitate training in conflict resolution free meetings in the Community.

Seth and his co-mediator, Liz McDannell, 42, Williamsport, practiced remain neutral, to the determination of the values and feelings of the participants, outstanding problems and require a solution to guide the brainstorming session.

In the meantime, Candi Kelley, 15, and Carol Schofield, 54, in the role of landlord and the tenant Eliza Susan Rose, attentive to the way in which the training of mediators did feel it.

“We will see how we judge without it,” said Schofield. “Even a few words are not necessarily neutral.”

Everything from a subtle at the head of a team logo on the T-shirt may upset the delicate balance of power, mediators learn, be careful they appear, and interactions, participants said.

In practice, everyone has tried again, on foot, all right, across the room, laughing nervously during classmates shouted “mookie", the faces and dancing like monkeys.

McDannell, the party was the hardest to teach them how to suppress the desire to offer their opinions and suggestions. Instead, mediators guide participants to identify their problems and solutions to develop, she said.

The Washington County Community Mediation Center offers free training for volunteers each spring, with 45 hours of training on three weekends in March, the Executive Director said Valerie Main. Then, the mediators of the training will focus on at least two meetings before the actual mediation is coupled with more experienced mediators for their first Real-World negotiations.

The centre, a community of 18 mediation centers in Maryland, is financially supported by the State of Washington County Gaming Commission and the Maryland Mediation and Conflict Resolution Office. Each month, volunteers, mediators to facilitate, 15 to 25 conflicts, such as parent-teen conflicts, disputes and divorce.

Since 2001, the Centre is also a partnership with the District Attorney’s Office to control many second-degree assault case, which would otherwise clog their personal quarrels of justice, Dee Dee mediator, “said Allen.

In all cases, he tries to involve them in the mid-mediators, the Mirror that the participants, coordinators aim is a mixture of different ages, sexes, races and social origin in the selection of volunteers. During the formation of the group, more than half of the volunteers are teenagers.

Many, like Seth and Candi, she said, for their service to student learning for school, but remained in so far as they were central to the mission.

This training will help you to avoid conflict in their own lives, “said Seth.

Besides diversity, the research centre of volunteers, who are committed to working with others “,” at home, “said.

“We want someone who really has a passion for conflict resolution and striving to turn their backs on the community,” she said.

ADAMS, Minn. - Four young women in the race to compete with the Mower County Dairy Princess 28th title in March in the heart of the Church of Jesus Adams.

The Coronation of the 55th annual event begins with a 7 pm “dairy social hour,'’the participants at a meeting of milk production royalties. Meals are served 7:30 pm

The candidates are Megan Gerlach 2008 princess, daughter of Vicky Gerlach Brownsdale, Irvin Samantha, the daughter of Donald and Renita Irvin Rose Creek; Chelsea Miller, the daughter of Mr. Miller and Sherri Taopi Rossow and Lynda, the daughter of Mike and Vicki De Rossow Dexter.

Three girls nine years, is the name of Mower County Milkmaids. You are Halverson Vanessa, the daughter of Jason and Karen Irvin, Rose Creek; Reinartz Cassidy, the daughter of Steve and Darcey Reinartz Adams and McKayla Ruechel, daughter of Shawn Ruechel and Karen Adams.

Terry Hamilton will perform local auctioneer’s hammer at the auction annual scholarships.

Organic Crops day, March 26

OWATONNA, Minn. - The third annual Southern Minnesota Organic Crops day, March 26 in the Steele County Community Center in Owatonna. Registration starts at 1:30 am and the program begins at 2 pm The fee is $ 10.

University of Minnesota Extension climatologist Mark Seeley will be the first speaker. New State Fertility specialist Dan Kaiser covers the basics of crops and fertility need fertlizer home, and then discuss with which organic fertilizer, certified products available on the market.

Other topics include, among others, the drainage of the research effort and interaction between applications and homes weed slurry.

An organic dinner is served.

For further information, please contact Brad Carlson (507) 332-6109.

Milk from the home and studio of wastewater is March 26

ROCHESTER, Minn. - A milk House Wastewater Treatment workshop is scheduled March 26, the expansion of regional policy at Rochester.

Registration starts at 8:30 am and the program begins at 9 am

Participants in the workshop will be put in the situation, a milk production and design of the home of Minnesota purification system wastewater for farmers. Participants who govern or install these systems is a critical understanding of the design and installation.

From the agenda items, you will have an overview of the milk house wastewater, an introduction to the system design, system design bark bed, the establishment of irrigation systems, treatment aaerobic design and other systems, metering systems, an overview of chemical systems, systems and economics And in choosing the right system.

Fees from passage of legislation on the prevention of beurlaubend court employees because of severe budget restrictions, the judiciary, government must once again on their survival. The legislature is in session in Tallahassee, the courts budget for the period from 1 July begins.

Writing a state budget with an attitude encourages the same across the board reductions for all sectors of government ignores the fact that, according to the Constitution, the judiciary is necessary, and its existence must be equal with the Two other branches - abgemagert not financially to the point, not to be to human beings.

The budget is, in Tallahassee in circulation, the courts with 10 per cent less than what we received this year, if we wish to survive, saying at the last minute, some pass to the approval of the courts’ Trust Fund money, it was only for other uses. If this budget becomes a reality, it is 16 per cent less than last year, the first funds that have already cut twice.

If these far from appropriate means are all people who have an extensive impact on our local courts - 6 Judicial Circuit - is a Pasco Pinellas counties, and not just by the approximately 60 employees who should be fired and their families. For example:

• If Drug Court is to eliminate some citizens may face time in prison, rather than the opportunity to register for free drugs, the members of our society;

• People to move in the courtyard at night, so they do not miss work more, that competition is a forum for transport citation;

• Parents who use mediation to resolve family disputes, as well as their children not to be a victim of a divorce proceeding, the costs and wait for the full course of civil litigation.

Other internal savings, because the loss of personnel is slowing significantly, handling cases in all sectors of activity. Because the courts are required by the criminal law, the priority, the remaining assets tribunal will be there. Although the processing of criminal cases, slow down (while our prisons are filled), while the rest - especially the cases of civil law - explore. Simply put, the courts as it is similar to that in the years 1970, but problems, courts are called upon today differs sharply from the year 1970, Florida. Processing case lasts much longer, because the expediters went.

Unterbezahlten staff

How did it come to this? Calm, on 1 July 2004, almost unnoticed amendments to Article V of the Constitution of Florida was in effect. This event was for the future, the final step in the process that began in 1972 and the establishment of a national judicial system unique. This final step tribunal relocated resources in the counties of the state, so it would be the single federal state. Amid the sharp reductions budget of the judiciary, retrospective shows how this event was manoeuvred to paralysis of the judicial system of government in Florida.

Margaret’s Wuwert she still “young 68 years.”

Sweet, but a little. Please refer to a “68-year old youth” would be a better description.

Like many of his generation have begun to show age, slowing their pace of working part-time or full-time, recreation, Wuwert wife, turns 69 next month, has agreed on new heavy responsibility. Charge, the National Children’s Rights Council in Washington, appointed head of access and training, employment, responsible for monitoring her child to 45 access centres in 17 states and the District of Columbia, and that the responsibility of setting up new sites.

She continues to serve as director of the Sfb northwest Ohio, a private non-profit organization, manages three such centres - called “The Gift Exchange” - for divorced or separated parents can Drop-off and pick up their children at a neutral forum, oversees recruitment. Officially, both part-time positions. In practice, their work is a mission that does not start and stop the clock.

“This is such a passion with me, and it is also important and necessary,” she says.

Among those of the importance of their work is the 11 Masonic Lodge District of Ohio. Last night was the organization so far, with his wife Wuwert annual Community Service Award.

She says, their goal is to ensure that children get the same time with his mom and dad. “The best parents, both parents - who is our watchword,” says quadruple mother and grandmother of 10

Their commitment is grounded in personal experience, religion and care for children. Looking back, she is not sure of what they order at this point, maybe years, it has begun to function as a brother and his brother, both divorced, and have difficulty seeing their children. “I am not saying they are not part of the basis, they have difficulties, but it irritated me that we can not see our Nichten receives and nephews. I think that was the motivation. Je do not know exactly, “she says.

As a young woman, Ms. Wuwert focuses on strengthening the family.

Ron Bowers Margaret Wuwert married 51 years, in March of this year towards their Rogers High School (where she was a member of the first graduates of the class, “she says.)

She was 17, he was at school and worked at Kroger’s bagger. They were in love.

You escape.

“A number of de facto couples, as Rogers this year. Was the kind of thing to do,” she says.

A friend Ron helped a new transmission seinem’49 Nash and with directions in one of the other couples had escape, Ron and Margaret continued to LaFayette, Ga., and got married. It was he, couples where Rogers, for whatever reason.

Most afternoons, sister cooks Ilive Jamaica national court, akki and saltfish, for customers Sweet Fingers on East 14th Street in San Leandro.

But on Monday, his day, it is more than life in Westmoreland or Kingston. “How Jamaica, the time available,” she says, watching “Divorce Court” with musicians of reggae Messenjah Selah to the apartment above the restaurant is yellow and green.

Ilive, 54, one of reggae artists on Saturday at some Sweet Fingers, is part of the increase in the number of immigrants from the island in early California - for the weather, music and the liberal policy - home.

While the majority of the approximately 736000 Jamaican immigrants live on the eastern coast of Germany, 11348 live in California, according to the population census figures. Of the Jamaican 739 in Alameda County - an increase of 6 percent over the past year - many of them lived in Oakland.

But the census figures, which are underreported, not always say that the whole story. This comes from the Jamaican lives in Oakland.

“Three or four years ago, you can barely a club to make music,” said Ilive. “They are everywhere.”

And as restaurants Jamaican Sweet finger not only serve rice and beans, goat or beef gestriegelt tail, fine. With Hype! TV and Irie F.M. De la Radio Caribbean, and the poster of reggae, on Friday and Saturday nights, it is an ideal place for the family in the Caribbean region to chill out, time and emotion of the music.

Selah, 34, plays there, even if he wants to play More outside the municipality. “No disrespect to the downstairs, but I want to be seen by more people in the big cities,” he said.

Still, Selah, which were in Atlanta during the past year, because it is “a bit slow on the reggae scene,” that the contacts he had with the town have helped his career.

“You can do what you have here,” he says

Dit. “New York’s most critical, and you have the same evidence. Not that I have a problem with it. But damned, you can use one of these talented artists in the break?”

Ilive sister, Pennsylvania to California for more than 10 years, the restaurant has been an assistant chef de cuisine, having rented a room in Sacramento to a friend of the owner of Sweet Fingers restaurant, chef de Clive Barnes. “I wanted to be a part of his restaurant,” she says. “It’s a family. You are affectionate, Feed, you, you will receive timely pay. ”

Jamaican restaurants around have benefited from the increasing number of immigrants from Caribbean.

“Whoever has real good,” said Sister Ilive.

David Schumacher who is in a restaurant with his family, Vital Ital Calabash, Adeline and Emerson streets of Berkeley, but said true, it is not only Jamaican, guardianship of the restaurant.

The State is free Hawai’i justice “in the Divorce Act of Hawai’i” program from noon to 1 pm today at the Supreme Court from the courtroom on the second floor Ali’iolani Hale, p. 417 King St. (Behind the King Kamehameha Statue).

Lawyer William C. Darrah Hawai’i is an overview of the law, because they are on custody and visitation rights, the division of assets and debts, family allowances, maintenance and other topics divorce . It is also above the steps in the process of divorce and the right to use available resources to get someone like in a divorce, Hawai’i.

Darrah has practiced divorce law in Hawaii for more than 30 years. A qualified mediator divorce, referees and settlement master, and the editor of the Hawai’i State Bar Association’s Manual and Hawaii Hawaii Journal of Divorce family law, he taught family law many education programs Hawaii’s judges, lawyers and members of the Public since 1979.

“Divorce Act in Hawai’i” is presented by the courts on a monthly basis as a public service.

LARGO - Celeste Minardi was sick for a long period prior to the police is trying to say, they kill the son of 15 years.

She had severe mood swings every day, because bipolar disorder, jurisprudence discs. She was involuntarily to the hospital at least twice. A rare neuromuscular diseases left so weak that she had misunderstood the suppression of small coins in his pocket, let alone work.

Minardi, bankruptcy for a period of three months, before the court has also written disks that it has struggled to pay insurance for their drugs.

Your medical problems and mental health - in detail in their divorce proceedings of the former Gulfport and St. Pete Beach City lawyer Timothy Driscoll - scales more light on the attack shocking.

On Saturday, Minardi, 55, two loggerheads during a visit to an office under surveillance psychiatrist and started off for his son Bradley Driscoll, Largo police. She pulled her belly open, cut his neck and injured his forehead. Saying the police, the attack was unfounded.

The visit to the office of Dr. Ronald Knaus and Associates in 1301 Seminole Blvd. Was part of a mediation agreement.

Minardi, Dunedin live on an assassination attempt.

Bradley, St. Petersburg High Contra, was taken to Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg with the wounds of life. The hospital could not release details about his condition Monday.

Minardi and Timothy Driscoll, were married in 1984 and divorced in 2005. According to the court records, Minardi could not work because they are different complaints. In addition, a violation again “on the job” during the year 1986, with chronic back pain.

My lawyer wrote that Minardi “is unable to work during this period, and moreover it is mentally infirmed. It is under the care of a psychiatrist and a psychologist and takes a lot of different drugs in an attempt to manage them. ”

A psychiatrist testify that during the divorce proceedings was a day Minardi mood, because they manic-depressive. Dr. Antoinette Falk also testified that Minardi had myasthenia gravis, a disease that weakens the muscles of the face, and can sometimes filtering members of the movement and throat.

It is a temptation for reinforcement of paramount importance in the volume Giuliani-Hanover divorce cases, particularly in legal circles. The courses train wreck a few uncomfortable questions about the advisability of promoting justice in New York Extreme divorce, in the way that tabloid talk shows propel the weak-minded in an abuse.

Some say that the show Giuliani, and others like them, show that the court in New York, divorce is the worst in the country. It is a claim that is impossible to prove, of course, and also in New York, little care, things are such that the rest of the country.

In the end, those who are determined to divorce in World War III can do it, lawyers and judges say if it in New York or Los Angeles or Keokuk, Iowa, USA.

Still, for better or worse, there are some differences in a divorce, in New York and across the divorce differently. New York has long resisted the trend of national legislation allowing no-fault divorce. Mediation, couples are invited to develop an agreement, rather than one of the judges, never train on his horse in New York. In some other countries, it is not legally binding. Even benign louder education classes for parents are controversial.

Some think all these measures are crucial to reducing hostility, which - not to mention the legal bills - by divorce. Maybe yes, others say, but there are good reasons New York is the way it is and must remain so. If there is a problem, they say it is the fault of some jurists evil high, and not the system.

‘’The New York Bar matrimonial not the reputation National Consultative people cooling of the conflict, in the interest of their children,’’said Andrew I. Schepard, a professor at the Hofstra University School of Law. New York, he said, is the Schlimmste'’Ort in the country for a child whose parents divorce.'’And he said, is the last major state in the country, require proof of guilt .

Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, and his wife, Donna Hanover, enmeshed in a system, the best possible resolution of conflicts, Professor Schepard said, but they are also part of the problem. ‘’The sound of all others,'’he said. The culture media'’filter. If it works, and Rudy is Donna, it is the way it’s done.'’

In reality, only a few cases of divorce has fought to the end. Most of the time, there are parties to settle, if no other reason, when they are not likely to make the $ 20000 or more in legal fees, a ground for divorce that cost each page.

From divorce can be very expensive, but in New York, the costs can be particularly high. In New York, guilt, the person to disembark.

For example, if the husband wants a divorce, but the woman did not, the man has to prove in court, she, wrongly, that in some way recognized in New York. It has four options: the inhuman and cruel treatment, neglect, imprisonment or adultery. The fact that perhaps he did bored with it, or in love with someone else, it is not enough in New York. This often creates a paradox in which the partners streunte blame, the other must be of misconduct.

In the case of Giuliani-Hanover, it is the mayor, made love with someone else wants marriage and divorce, but it can not, unless Ms. Hanover does not contest the charges, or if he proves that Ms. Hanover fault. He accuses sie'’grausame and inhuman treatment,'’but that the details of his allegations were not made public. It must, under the law of one of those details about the divorce process, the date and time and a description of their cruel and inhumane behavior.

At the same time, the judge in the case of Hanover Giuliani has sort of a list of issues bitter. Last week, the mayor was the payment of $ 1800 in Hanover female child per month. It was for $ 3,200. The judge had refused a request that Mr. Giuliani are forced to pay the $ 58000 salary wife Press Secretary to Hanover, which has been paid by the city until last spring, when Mr. Giuliani stripped Hanover Ms. his services as a first lady bonds

The increase in the number of cases, divorce has seen in recent years a significant delay of the state in many family courts despite concerted efforts by judicial officials to facilitate the problem.

In some countries, divorce lawyers say that the waiting time for a process in a case of divorce can last up to four years, which in personal meditation and economic importance to the people concerned. Psychologists say that the slow pace of the divorce proceedings often negatively on the ability of the court to specific decisions on matters of parental rights and visitation rights.

And while officials try to catch up in the award of more than judges in the family and the creation of the courts in divorce mediation panels in each region, some lawyers say that radical changes are needed If cases, the divorce must be reduced to assess Proportions.

As a result, a growing number of lawyers seem themselves matters into their own hands, in other lawyers to serve the so-called “rent-a-judges” and as a conciliator their cases. “The system is blocked”

“We suffer from a shredder residue, in marriage, the courts,” said James P. Yudes, Springfield divorce lawyer. “The system is at a standstill.”

Alice Stockton, the Deputy Director of the Family Division of Court Administration Office, said that from July 1987 to June 1991, the total number of divorce cases and the courts of the state has increased 41 percent – from 34,938 to 49,226. And given that the number of listings has increased, Stockton woman said, she also catching up in the Landkreise animated.

“There are probably a million reasons why some circles have backlog,” said Stockton. “Some of them may have a high volume of cases very complex. Others simply do not have enough judges. Sadly, there are simply too many people increasingly divorced.

Another reason for the delay, Stockton woman said, is the fact that judges of the family in the Superior Court of the State are responsible for more than 13 different types of events, including juvenile delinquency, at the end of parental rights, abuse and violence are children in the family. Judges must divide attention

Therefore, judges must divide their attention between the typical cases, divorce and the most urgent cases where someone’s health or safety might be in danger.

While the Tribunal for the year 1991, for example, there were 36054 cases of domestic violence in the country, 35 percent more than in 1987. These complaints were heard almost immediately, in every district, so that the backlog of other types of events, in particular divorce.

In some countries, which are that the backlog in major delays between periods where divorce and the claims, if they finally in the process.

“Bergen County has four years of waiting,” said Yudes, practice for more real since 1975. Other countries with circuits include residues of Essex, Middlesex, Morris, Passaic and Somerset.

AT divorce mediation Center in West Hartford, the few property values of marriage and development and an agreement on the petition, there is a court in the divorce proceeding unchallenged.

The Centre, which was at the end of 1989, Emily J. Moskowitz, specializes in family law, when she worked for the Connecticut Legal Services.

Moskowitz wife, who is aged 47, divorced and mother of two daughters, has taught students before the Special Studies promotion for a child in the development and operation of a service adviser. After earning a doctorate in law, she decided she wanted to stay in the board and the opening of the Mediation Center. Recently, in an interview in mid-spoken Ms. Moskowitz, why human beings need a specialist in mediation. Here are some excerpts from the interview.

Question: What do you do, that men and women can not do itself?

R. Clearly, I defuse the anger. He will say something to me, in his usual way, and the way they talk, which is the reason they could no longer be married. And I repeat what he said to her, in a nonjudgmental way.

Then, it intends in this way, and said: “Okay.” She then his answer, and he hears it in the same way, and I say: ‘Wait, this is what she said. ” And suddenly hear what they say, they are very different.

I tried all pejoratives outside, and place it in a very neutral. Now, we have something to work. They can not do so at the kitchen table, because if they could do so, it would still married to another.

Question: Do you ask why the divide?

A. I never ask. It’s not my business. But I always know who is with the case or who was there. It kills me not to ask, it’s a part of me who know.

When I ask the question, do you know what would happen? He will tell me its history, then tell me their story is that it defend himself, it is to defend themselves, they fight among themselves, and you have all thrown out. I keep it nonprejudicial. I filter cloth as married couples to another, which makes him mad.

Question: If the judges to take into account the reason for the deviation divided, if heritage?

R. It is not really important for the judges, which in a marriage. In a no-fault divorce, although it is a little challenged, the judges want to see, go to each party, and have a life. They do not want someone to whom you do not have a chance to come back. Given the fact that, when they see that someone 5 an hour versus $ someone makes $ 100,000 a year, they can share the heritage accordingly.

Q: When shopping for a condo, what should I look for in the way of insulation R values, studs, sheetrock, etc., that would point to construction that will mitigate noise?

A: Look for R11 insulation, double-stud wall construction and double layers of wallboard, said Bill Stewart managing partner of SSA Acoustics, a Seattle acoustical engineering firm specializing in multifamily residential design.

However that just answers your question. To really address sound transmission you have to look beyond it because there’s much more to good sound control, he said.

For starters, don’t assume that a property built to minimum code requirements will minimize sound. It won’t. Building codes focus on health and safety issues, not sound control. Most new upper-end condos use techniques that far exceed minimum building standards, Stewart said.

If you want to really avoid sound transmission between units here’s what you look for: a double-stud “party wall,” which is the wall between units. In less-soundproof buildings these walls are single-stud, meaning there’s one set of studs with wallboard nailed on either side.

Party walls in better buildings have two sets of studs with space in-between, and the wallboard isn’t attached directly to them. Instead either a metal or a synthetic rubber system connects the wallboard and studs; this stops the vibration that causes sound.

Luxury buildings place batt insulation in the cavity and finish off with two layers of five-eighths inch wallboard on either side.

His advice on condo shopping: if you can get into the unit next door do so. Bring a boombox with music that has a lot of bass. Turn it to the level you’d listen to, then go next door to the unit you’re considering. If it’s not bothersome that’s a good sign.

You should also ask to see construction drawings; most companies make them available, Stewart said. Look particularly at floor construction because it also affects sound transmission.

For more on sound transmission and solutions to it go to his firm’s Website: www.ssaacoustics.com.

Q: My husband and I were married five years and had owned a home for three when he walked out two years ago.

In the meantime I paid the mortgage and all the housing expenses. He’s now returned to say he wants a divorce and half the equity in the house, and he’ll make things difficult if I don’t agree.

How much is he entitled to? What can I do to avoid an ugly court fight?

More : seattletimes.nwsource.com

Thank you for your very important article about the legal system of divorce in New Jersey and for your focus on mediation ('’The State of Disunion,'’ Dec. 1).

Increased public awareness of the mediation alternative, as well as the imprimatur of the legislature, are devoutly to be wished for. In addition to promoting costly and corrosive court battles, the adversarial system advances the myth that divorce is a final event.

In fact, couples with children are forever tied to each other. Divorce ends a legal marriage, but it does not end a family. Ideally, an agreement, especially a mediated agreement, should provide a blueprint for the restructuring of a family, and the process of mediation should be a forum for civilized, respectful problem solving.

However, mediators need to be trained to understand the emotional conflicts that are often the underlying source of conflict, for example, the rage one spouse may feel at being abandoned by the other, or the terror at the prospect of being economically bereft. Another necessity is a sound grounding in matrimonial law, which provides the boundaries within which negotiation takes place.

Ultimately, the success of mediation will depend on the skills of the mediators, their substantive knowledge, their problem-solving skills and conflict-managing skills. Particular attention needs to be paid to the qualifications and training of mediators as this becomes an alternative for more and more people.

LINDA P. FISH
Attorney and Family Mediator
Englewood

Conceding that the legal system too often exacerbates the pain of divorce, New York State’s Chief Judge, Judith Kaye, announced a strong set of reforms this week designed to protect matrimonial clients against unscrupulous lawyers and to expedite judicial treatment of divorce cases.

Her plan embraces most of the recommendations made earlier by a special 10-member committee of both judges and divorce lawyers. It also owes much to a 1991 report by New York City’s Department of Consumer Affairs. That report detailed serious abuses, mainly against women clients, by lawyers who apply pressure tactics to collect fees, drive up prices by delaying tactics and keep clients uninformed about their cases.

Under the new rules, which take effect Nov. 1, matrimonial clients will be entitled to a written fee schedule (presumably with flexibility for unforeseen circumstances) and itemized bills. Nonrefundable retainers will be prohibited, and binding fee arbitration required at the option of the client. How well the rules work rests heavily on whether the courts can live up to their mandate to move the process along. The practice of foreclosing on a client’s home to collect unpaid bills will be ended, and the freedom lawyers now enjoy to obtain liens on a mortgage or the final divorce settlement will be restrained. A new disciplinary rule will forbid lawyers to begin sexual relationships with emotionally vulnerable clients during their cases.

The problem of shady lawyering and a sluggish court system isn’t confined to matrimonial practice. Recognizing this, Judge Kaye has appointed a new committee to consider broader application of her new standards. Meanwhile, there’s still plenty of work left for the Legislature in Albany. Judge Kaye needs to goad lawmakers who haven’t paid attention to complaints about the state’s distribution law, which governs the divvying up of assets. And there’s no reason many divorces can’t be handled through a streamlined mediation process that spares clients crushing legal fees and frees scarce judicial resources.

It’s also time that New York lawmakers faced up to another overdue change – making formal disciplinary charges against lawyers public. The current secrecy serves only to fuel public cynicism and all those bad jokes about lawyers.

Divorce Lawyers Assailed in Study,” your May 5 article on the report of a committee appointed by New York State’s highest court, raises an important question. Why are most people in a matrimonial dispute doomed to be mired in an obsolete system that ill serves their needs so much of the time?

There is no disagreement that the divorce experience is a major trauma in the lives of the couple and their children. Reliance on the adversarial system for relief comes to us from the Judeo-Christian and English Common Law tradition that marriage is indissoluble except for exceptional, grievous circumstances. Not so long ago, one had to “discover” one’s spouse “in pari delicto” to establish grounds for divorce in a court.

The legal focus has shifted and is concentrated on distribution of property, spouse and child support, and custody. Lawyers and judges are trained in applicable case law and statutes, but often not equipped to address the highly charged and traumatic emotional setting in which the legal battle takes place, with a direct impact on all negotiations.

Furthermore, although many of a couple’s interests in a divorce are obviously adverse, many are not (preserving marital assets, the best interest of the children). In the adversarial setting, common interests are often overlooked. As a result of much good research, we know a lot more about what happens to people when the family breaks down. We need to discover how to use this knowledge in constructive ways.

For example, some people, can be well served by a mediation process in which a team of mediators (mental health professionals and lawyers) help the couple address issues relevant to a divorce in a process that focuses on creative problem solving, rather than adversarial dueling.

The protection of the legal system should, of course, remain, but might the system not offer a forum for those who cannot otherwise be helped? LINDA P. FISH, ADELE M. HOLMAN Englewood, N.J., May 7, 1993 The writers, a lawyer and a social worker respectively, are with New Jersey Mediation Associates.

As a divorce mediator, I was delighted to see such a large article devoted to mediation on Aug. 29 [ Westchester Q&A: “Helping Couples Go Their Separate Ways” ] . Mediation is getting increasingly broad coverage and progressively good press. But this article has not served the profession – or the public – well at all.

It is a charming story but ignores the fact that people seeking divorce mediation should be prepared to ask a mediator some important questions relating to his or her credentials and background. For instance, what did the mediator do to prepare for the job? What training did he or she have? What standards of practice does the mediator adhere to? What code of ethics does he or she abide by? Many people who read the story could get the impression that any individuals who think they are good with people and who have been divorced can call themselves divorce mediators. Not!

Professional divorce mediators may come from any walk of life. What makes them divorce mediators is a 60-hour training course, which has been accredited by the Academy of Family Mediators, the national professional organization of mediators based in Golden Valley, Minn., along with numerous other formal demonstrations of expertise. New York State also has a New York State Council on Divorce Mediation with divisions all over the state, which has similar requirements for practitioner membership. A professional mediator in New York State should be a member of both these organizations as a safeguard of the standards of mediators.

Additionally, professional standards dictate that mediators not act as attorney (or therapist) for either client but that they send each partner to his or her own attorney for review of the memorandum. We feel this is vitally necessary for the legal protection of each of them. The mediator’s approach to the divorce process should keep therapy and mediation separate. Having clients explore the problems that led to the divorce in the context of mediation can too easily sabotage the mediation process.

Thanks for an article that increases public awareness of some of the benefits of mediation – the most efficient and inexpensive course for couples who have decided to divorce. One of mediation’s biggest benefits was not mentioned – that of the couple’s continuing cooperative role as parents, if indeed they are. But that’s another article. NAOMI S. ECKHAUS Scarsdale

In an effort to curb the growing delays and costs in overburdened courts, New York State’s Chief Judge has announced plans to use mediation, arbitration and other alternatives to traditional courtroom trials.

Though a few courts in the state already make use of such options, this is New York’s first effort to come up with a statewide menu of court-sponsored alternatives for resolving cases, both civil and criminal. Similar options are available in more than half of the states.

“If it’s worked for so many other people, why can’t it work for us?” said Chief Judge Judith S. Kaye, who announced the plan this week along with the state’s chief administrative judge, E. Leo Milones. The search for such alternatives is the latest in a series of reform efforts, including measures to combat unscrupulous divorce lawyers and improve the jury selection process, sought by Judge Kaye, who was appointed by Gov. Mario M. Cuomo last year. Streamlining the Process

The idea, she says, is not only to relieve the state’s courts, which processed more than 2.5 million cases last year, but also to streamline the process. “There has to be a more efficient way to do this,” Judge Kaye said of the current system, where cases often linger for years as they wait in line for court dates, filing deadlines and other court-required steps.

Judge Kaye said the potential costs or savings from a statewide mediation plan were unknown.

The specifics of court alternatives are to come from an 11-member committee of judges, lawyers, professors and professional mediators appointed by Judges Kaye and Milones. The panel met for the first time on Friday in Manhattan to begin reviewing options available elsewhere, from New Jersey, which opened the first office for mediating complex legal disputes 10 years ago, to Florida, to California to the District of Columbia.

The committee’s survey should be completed by June, though Judge Kaye said yesterday that she might have parts of the plan ready to implement sooner. She said she expected that some recommendations could be instituted by court rule; if new laws were required for others, she said, she would ask the Legislature for them.

The panel is to review options for both civil and criminal cases. One option is mediation, in which a trained mediator tries to help the two sides come up with a mutually agreeable resolution. In arbitration, both sides agree to let an independent arbitrator make a decision.

In a minitrial, an independent authority evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of each side’s case and assesses what the outcome might be at trial. Though either side may still opt for a full-fledged trial, often they do not, said Fern Schair Sussman, chief administrative officer of the New York City Bar Association and a co-chairwoman of Judge Kaye’s committee.

More : query.nytimes.com

WILLIAM and Monica McBride were at an impasse. They had been separated for just over a year when a dispute arose over the custody of their 4-year-old daughter, Lauren. A custody trial date was scheduled.

But the judge presiding over their case suggested that before the couple returned to court, they attend a voluntary program called Parent Education and Custody Effectiveness, or Peace program, which was begun as a pilot project last spring in the county’s Supreme Court and Family Courts.

The program is a somewhat unusual marriage between the legal and mental-health professions. It consists of three classes taught by lawyers and psychologists and is designed to teach parents how to minimize the damaging effect of divorce and custody battles on their children.

The McBrides decided to attend the course. Their lawyers’ fees were mounting, and a resolution of their differences about Lauren seemed distant. But soon after the first session, the couple began talking about compromise. A Settlement Was Reached

“After the first class I knew right away there was no way I wanted to go back into the courtroom,” Mr. McBride said. “They steer you 150 percent away from the idea that I’m going to go in and win, to saying I’m going to go in and get the best results for my children.”

After the program ended, the McBrides worked out a settlement. Their lawyers drew up the papers, and Lauren was spared a custody trial.

“The classes really opened my eyes a lot,” Mrs. McBride said. “There you are in court battling for divorce or custody, and it’s costing you umpteen dollars. It made me realize that this was not what I wanted for my daughter. Bill and I both always wanted the best for her from the minute she came into this world, and making her choose would not be the best.”

The message of the Peace program is not that parents should not divorce. Rather, it is designed to remind parents who are in the middle of an emotional trauma not to lose sight of the well-being of their children.

“One of the most difficult aspects in dealing with custody cases from the point of view of every judge is that the parties themselves are so emotionally involved that they lose sight of the forest through the trees,” said Justice Sondra Miller of the Supreme Court’s appellate division, second department, in White Plains. “In believing that they are doing what is good for the child they can simply destroy the child’s life and health.”

But the program is not without its critics. Some advocates of women’s rights believe that the course discriminates against the spouse who has less money, usually the woman. By looking at the custody issue in a vacuum without considering financial issues, the critics say, the program diverts attention from the real motivating factors of a divorce case.

“The Peace program is seriously flawed because it cannot adequately address the emotional distress of divorce while ignoring the concerns caused by mounting unpaid bills, by sharp disparities in living circumstances between spouses and by dwindling – or disappearing – marital assets,” said Rita W. Warner, a matrimonial lawyer in Manhattan and the co-founder of the New York State Coalition on Women’s Legislative Issues.

More : query.nytimes.com

A busy week in the Legislature included action on a bill that would make the state Insurance Commissioner responsible for making sure that shareholders are protected during a reorganization of the Newark-based Prudential Insurance Co. of America.

The company, the only mutually owned (owned by policyholders) insurance company in the state, wants to convert to a publicly traded company, owned by stockholders.

The bill, approved by the Senate on Monday, which now goes to Governor Whitman, sets the framework for Prudential to compensate its 11 million policyholders, including about one million New Jersey residents, in stock.

The company has pledged to return its full value to owners of life insurance and annuity policies. But consumer advocates argued that the bill contains loopholes that could leave policyholders shortchanged. It does not specify how the value of the company will be determined (estimates range from $12 billion to $30 billion) and lacks limits on executive compensation. Instead, the bill requires the state Insurance Commissioner, Elizabeth Randall, to oversee the reorganization.

‘’This is perhaps the biggest and most complex transaction New Jersey will ever have to oversee,'’ said Anthony Wright, the program director for New Jersey Citizen Action, a consumer advocacy group. ‘’The Legislature basically shifted responsibility for protecting policyholders back to the commissioner.'’

The bill’s co-sponsor, Assemblyman Christopher ‘’Kip'’ Bateman, a Republican of Somerville, said in a written statement that the bill protected consumers by requiring a ‘’fair and equitable'’ distribution of stock.

More : query.nytimes.com

A wealthy merchant of Boston, named Charles Croft Holbrook, charged his wife, Tabiah M. G. Holbrook, with adultery in 1859. A countercharge was made against him, and an attempt was therefore made to avoid the publication of the domestic troubles by arranging for a voluntary separation. Rufus Choate acted as a mediator, and finally an agreement was drawn up according to which Mrs. Holbrook was to be paid a fixed sum out of…

WHEN Irene and Norman Katz decided it was time to split up their 26-year marriage, they feared the divorce process.

‘’We had seen other friends spend a lot of money on divorces, killing each other in the process and tearing the children apart. And the sad thing is that usually both sides ended up walking out of court thinking they had gotten screwed,'’ said Ms. Katz, a 50-year-old corporate consultant. So they decided to seek out a divorce mediator.

‘’Our case was emotional and difficult, as separating after a long-term relationship would be,'’ Mrs. Katz said. ‘’But we were together at court in the end, we walked out together, shook hands, and it was O.K., as much as any divorce can be O.K.,'’ she said. ‘’It was fair and equitable. Neither one of us ended up feeling like losers or full of hate.'’

Mediators say this is how it should be most of the time, noting that they can navigate a couple through a divorce in months rather than years, and do so much more inexpensively than lawyers in court.

Experts say the Katzes’ experience is common among couples who choose mediation. The process began at the end of spring and ended by the beginning of fall. It lasted 10 sessions, with a total cost of around $7,000 for the mediator and each spouse’s lawyer. (The lawyers were used for phone consultation and to approve the final decree.)

The couple called the New Jersey Association of Professional Mediators for a list of members. Once they had decided on a mediator, the first question he asked was ‘’why we were there and what our goals were,'’ Mrs. Katz said.

Answering that question is an important first step, mediators said, because not all couples are ready for mediation.

‘’People who have family violence, these cases are definitely not for mediation, nor are people with psychological problems, drug problems, or people who are not willing to bend,'’ Mary Vivian Fu Wells, president of the New Jersey Association of Professional Mediators. ‘’That why we need to do an assessment before starting mediation.'’

Mr. Katz did not wish to be interviewed for this article, referring all questions to his former wife. According to Mrs. Katz, both she and her former husband saw the mediator together unless there was an impasse. In these cases each would talk to him separately, and then meet together again once negotiations could proceed.

In the end, both she and her husband avoided much of the animosity so common in a divorce. They still consult one another about important issues and see each other at family occasions. Perhaps most importantly, their 23- and 26-year-old daughters were never forced to pick sides and both still have good relationships with both their parents, their mother said.

‘’Mediation is a healthy way to go through a painful process with the least amount of scars,'’ Ms. Katz said. ‘’And it’s definitely much better than going through the legal system hurt and poor.'’

New Jersey Association of Professional Mediators: (800) 981-4800.

Another alternative to divorce litigation, as mentioned in “Divorce Logjam Leads to Alternatives” on July 26, is mediation.

It is important to note that couples who mediate their marital agreements together rarely find themselves in court for postjudgment litigation. This is especially true concerning child-support obligations. It seems that once the couple have worked together to create their agreement, they find they’ve created the fairest agreement possible reflecting their common interests, not their individual positions.

Mediations allows the parties to control the decisions that affect their family through a voluntary process. The couple use attorneys for legal advice during the mediation process, thereby insuring informed decision making.

Mediation is another alternative to avoiding the backlogged court system. Although private divorce arbitration is making gains, mediation is the least costly, most expeditious cooperative way to resolve matrimonial and other disputes without the torturous court process. GLADYS KARTIN Mediator American Mediation Association Fort Lee

Dr. Sari Lynn Kramer, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Julian S. Kramer of South Orange, N.J., was married yesterday to Samuel L. Margulies, son of Mrs. Emmanuel Margulies of New York and the late Mr. Margulies. Rabbi Barry Greene of Livingston, N.J., performed the ceremony at the home of the bride’s parents.

The bride, who will retain her name, is a psychologist at the Veterans Administration Hospital in East Orange, N.J. She was graduated magna cum laude from Barnard College, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, and received a master’s degree in education from Harvard University and a master’s degree and a doctorate in clinical psychology from New York University. Her father is chief executive officer of the Suburban Foods Corporation in Clifton, N.J.

Mr. Margulies, a lawyer in Montclair, N.J., is chairman of the New Jersey Council on Divorce Mediation in Upper Montclair, N.J. He was graduated from New York University, where he also received a master’s degree in international relations. He has a doctorate in political science from the University of Oregon and a law degree from the Rutgers University Law School. His previous marriage ended in divorce. His father was president of the Community Bank in Linden, N.J.

LAST month, the New York City Bar Association announced a new service for resolving disputes in co-ops and condominiums. The association’s Co-op and Condo Mediation Project is designed to help shareholders, unit owners, managing agents and co-op and condo boards settle disputes without resorting to expensive, time-consuming and often acrimonious litigation.

‘’This program presents an excellent opportunity for residents of co-ops and condos to resolve what are often difficult-to-resolve quality of life disputes,'’ said Phyllis H. Weisberg, a Manhattan real estate lawyer. ‘’These are usually the kind of disputes that the courts are not well equipped to handle.'’

Michael T. Manzi, chairman of the bar association’s Cooperative and Condominium Law Committee, said the program was primarily designed to address ‘’everyday disputes'’ like complaints about noisy neighbors, secondhand smoke and odors that migrate from one apartment to another.

Mr. Manzi said the program was intended not only for disputes between residents, but also for matters between residents and managers and between residents and the board. It can also be used in cases that are already in litigation.

Daniel Weitz, chairman of the bar association’s Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee, said mediation was usually faster and less expensive than litigation. In addition, he said, with litigation the parties surrender control of the outcome to a judge or jury; with mediation, the parties themselves determine the outcome.

In litigation, the parties are bound by court rules and the rules of evidence; in mediation, such rules are greatly relaxed and the parties can tell their stories in a way they might not be able to tell them in court. And while it would be unusual for a judge to meet privately with parties in litigation, a mediator can talk to the parties independently, thereby gaining insights that might otherwise be unavailable.

Under the program, Mr. Weitz said, all parties involved must voluntarily agree to mediation. They then fill out an Agreement to Mediate and submit it with a nonrefundable administration fee of $100 per party. (While each party pays its own expenses, the mediator’s fee – which can range from $125 to $400 an hour – is shared equally.)

Once the agreement is filed, the bar association provides the names of five trained mediators. The parties select two names, and the association gets in touch with both to see who is available sooner. If the matter is not in litigation, the parties may provide the mediator with a summary of the dispute. If the matter is in litigation, the parties submit any court papers that have been filed.

From there, Mr. Weitz said, the mediation is more like a conversation between the parties and the mediator than the rigid back-and-forth of a court proceeding. ‘’The parties are basically negotiating with one another, with the mediator guiding the negotiation,'’ he said

More : query.nytimes.com

As a mediator, I was glad to read “Divorce Fee-for-All” (Topics of The Times, Jan. 28), on a New York State blue-ribbon committee to propose reforms of lawyer abuses in matrimonial cases. For the unfortunate people who are divorcing it would be better if as much attention were given to mediation as to litigation.

Mediators are trained and accredited. Some are lawyers, some mental health professionals. We believe mediation is the better way to separate, especially when children are involved. The cost and time are a fraction of those for lawyer-led actions.

Lawyers are not cut out of the process. An ethical mediator recommends that the parties take the memorandum that is produced by mediation to their own lawyers for review and to be turned into a legal agreement. NAOMI S. ECKHAUS Scarsdale, N.Y., Feb. 1, 1993

DEAR DR. BROTHERS: My ex-husband and I have just finished a six-month-long process of separation and divorce. Though we never argued in front of the kids, we did have big problems. We both agreed that we needed to part, and we went through a mediation process and now share custody of the kids. We talk nearly every day on the phone because we have lots of parenting details to go over. We still live close to each other and try to go to school functions together. Our oldest daughter, who is 13, said to me today, “Why do you have to hang around with Daddy?” I was shocked. Is this too much togetherness? – P.A.

DEAR P.A.: You have a very civilized and admirable attitude toward your divorce, and you and your ex obviously tried to consider the children in the decisions you came to. Although divorce is never easy for kids, I’m sure your kids will have an easier time than most adjusting to your new way of life. Your daughter is at an age where she is probably too mature to believe the fantasy that Mom and Dad might get together again someday, yet she’s young enough to probably still wish it. This conflict might leave her angry – it seems that you get along well, so she wonders, why is the family in this predicament? She also might have friends with divorced parents who are more battle-oriented. Against that standard, you are an oddity.

I don’t see that you need to change your ways – just explain that Mom and Dad aren’t angry at each other, and you are both still good parents. Then perhaps it’s time to start going out with other men, in case your children do have any lingering fantasies of a family reunion.

DEAR DR. BROTHERS: My sister is 47, and ever since I can remember, she has had a bit of trouble with alcohol. She has always been fond of beer and drinks quite a lot, and I’ve had to drive her home on more occasions than I care to remember. I was happy to hear she was going to the doctor for a checkup recently, as I was sure the subject of her recent binges would come up, and the doctor would do or say something to wake her up. When she got back from the doctor she said that he never mentioned or asked about her drinking, so she didn’t either. She said he never asks! Should I believe her? – E.M.

DEAR E.M.: I’m sure you realize that someone with an alcohol problem who doesn’t want to admit that there is anything wrong or who doesn’t want to give up drinking – which is the usual treatment of choice – is not about to bring up the subject with her doctor. As for her doctor’s not questioning your sister about her drinking habits, you probably should believe her. A University of California-San Francisco study in a recent issue of the journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research showed that the subject frequently tends to be overlooked by physicians. Even though 65 percent of the problem drinkers who were studied had a medical visit, the author found that only 24 percent had their problem addressed. Even at a psychiatric visit only 65 percent of problem drinkers had their habits questioned. And although women over 40 were more likely to have a medical or psychiatric visit than others were, their drinking was not addressed more often. So chances are your sister is telling the truth. Encourage her to bring up the topic next time.

A parent rarely utters the words “happy” and “divorce” in the same breath, but a Seattle lawyer is pushing a new practice to break up marriages without tearing apart families.

After spending decades helping parents dissolve their marriages, Carol Bailey thought she could improve the system. In April, she created a practice dedicated to keeping divorces out of court, but not because the twice-married Texan is opposed to the practice. She just thinks it doesn’t always belong in a courtroom, where families often break down.

The idea isn’t new. For years, some divorce lawyers have worked to avoid nasty courts fights and preserve families. Bailey took it a step further by consciously dedicating an entire practice to the approach, highlighting a growing trend among family lawyers to skip litigation and get couples to cooperate.

“People think of divorce and imagine ‘War of the Roses,’ ” said Lisa Gilmore, a veteran family lawyer at the Seattle-based law firm Helsell-Fetterman. “I think people don’t realize there is an easier way to do it.”

At the heart of this style and Bailey’s Integrative Family Law practice is the belief that, after a marriage dies, the family still lives and that much of what occurs in court weakens the bonds parents need to raise their kids.

“It is about a family that is going to be in a huge transition, but it’s still going to be a family,” Bailey said from her downtown Seattle office. “My whole thing is to ask people, ‘What is winning? What does that mean in the divorce?’ “

Too often married couples lose because matrimony remains the coin toss of American society, with up to 50 percent of couples that tie the knot these days eventually divorcing or separating, according to Rutgers University’s National Marriage Project.

That meant Bailey had plenty of business as a guardian ad litem for King County Superior Court, the one who investigates parents and key individuals and recommends to the court who should get the kids and for how long.

But a friendly divorce isn’t for everyone. To divorce happily, parents must be able to put their kids first, Bailey said.

That means a husband and wife must set aside their bitterness and cooperate.

Unlike the classic image of divorce dominated by hearings, motions and depositions, Bailey tries to keep cases outside the court system. A couple settles most matters in mediation, then returns to court to file their final agreement, an approach that can save them thousands of dollars in legal fees, she said.

Since opening her doors five months ago, Bailey has worked on 10 divorces, though she says she has applied her ideas to more than 300 cases over nearly two decades.

More : seattlepi.nwsource.com

Nearly every day, distraught parents walk into Greg Seim’s cramped downtown office, pleading for help in getting judges to allow them more time with their children, or lift their monthly support obligations, or prevent an ex from leaving the state.

Though he has consulted with more than 1,000 this year, the 37-year-old paralegal had assumed December would be a slower month, with divorced families resigned to their holiday arrangements. But Seim was wrong. The phone has not stopped ringing.

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Take an idealistic couple in love. Add an angry daughter who ignores her new stepmom and a son who acts out because he misses his “real” dad. Mix in a controlling ex-wife and bitter ex-husband. Sprinkle with in-laws who snub the new spouse.

The resulting concoction: a blended family — with the only thing everyone agreeing on is that, yes, they do feel like they’ve been through a blender, literally. Emotions are definitely mixed and whirling.

Two new books aim to help parents cope with remarriage, kids (his, hers and ours), ex-spouses, and extended family. While both cover some of the same issues, they differ in tone and philosophy.

The No. 1 rule, according to “Ex-Etiquette for Parents: Good Behavior After a Divorce or Separation,” is “Put the children first.” “From this day forward, make all your decisions based on their welfare, no matter if you have to be uncomfortable, swallow your pride, move, do without or go slower in a new relationship than you would like,” write co-authors Jann Blackstone-Ford and Sharyl Jupe. “Forget about ‘the principle of the thing’ when disagreeing with their other parent.”

In “Remarried with Children: Ten Secrets for Successfully Blending and Extending Your Family,” author Barbara LeBey argues that the top guideline should be “Put the marriage first.” A solid relationship, she says, will ultimately benefit children through stability and a unified front.

The authors of “Ex-Etiquette for Parents: Good Behavior After a Divorce or Separation” work together on the Bonus Families Web site (www.bonusfamilies.com), which promotes a positive, collaborative approach to stepparenting. They also bring their personal experience of working through resentment and anger as the ex-wife (Jupe) and current wife (Blackstone-Ford).

“Ex-Etiquette for Parents: Good Behavior After a Divorce or Separation”

Jann Blackstone-Ford and Sharyl Jupe
Chicago Review Press, $14.95 (paperback)

The two are now friends, but they acknowledge it took a lot of time, adjustment and compromise. The book’s strength is their real-life stories and perspectives, as well as those from Web site visitors and Blackstone-Ford’s work as a divorce and stepfamily mediator. Much of it is written in a question-and-answer format, from “Should the dog go between houses too?” (no) to “Should we move in together if my children do not like my partner?” (no, at least not immediately).

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A single mom’s job is transferred to another state; unless she moves, she’s unemployed. Her ex-husband, who spends most weekends with their kids, doesn’t want to give up his connection to them.

It’s lose-lose situations like this that make relocation one of the most difficult and contentious issues in divorce, local experts say.

While a 5-year-old state law clarifies what should happen when divorced parents want to move with their children, it can’t soothe the heightened stakes in what one local attorney calls “an almost un-resolvable problem.”

“These are heart-rending disputes because an ex-wife has the right to move on with her life but the consequences for the ex-husband can be very, very grave,” said East Coast mediator Sam Margulies, author of “Getting Divorced Without Ruining Your Life.” “There’s not a very logical middle ground. If you live in New Jersey and your ex-wife wants to move to Seattle, you can’t compromise by settling on Nebraska.”

The battles are becoming more common with our mobile society, more involved fathers and remarriage, experts say. A small sample of King County relocation notices found a new spouse/partner or parent’s job were the top reasons cited for a move.

As incomes rise and social mobility increases, growing numbers of urban Chinese couples are getting divorced.

It’s only been since Oct. 1, 2003, that divorce has been relatively easy. Before that, couples needed workplace supervisors’ approval to divorce, and they endured meddling attempts at mediation, either on the job or by a Communist Party-appointed neighborhood busybody.

Now, if both parties work out their own terms for dividing property, child custody and debt settlement, the paperwork for a divorce can be done in about an hour. The cost is $1.10. No forced mediation occurs.

“Everywhere in China, no matter how small the city, divorce is more common. A lot of people now understand that divorce is not a bad thing,” said Shu Xin, who has advised couples since the late 1990s and bills himself as China’s first marriage counselor.

It’s not just divorces that are more frequent. So are cohabitation among young adults, affairs and paternity tests. With society quickly changing, people are finding they have greater social freedom — and that sometimes engenders mistrust between partners.

“People’s mentality has changed. People have greater networks and social lives than before. They meet more people,” said Fan Rumiao, a Shanghai lawyer who handles divorce cases.

As in many parts of the world, extramarital affairs are the main cause for divorce. A survey this year at the Marriage Crisis Service Center in the southern city of Chongqing found that a spouse having an affair led to 70 percent of divorces.

“Men sometimes see having an affair as a badge of honor. Some of them imagine a Western way of life, particularly a U.S. lifestyle. They think you should have lots of lovers,” said Zhu Jianjun, a psychology professor in Beijing who also counsels couples.

“Most of the people who had an affair admitted that they were dissatisfied with their sex life, which is regarded as a crucial part of marriage,” Chen Hongtu, the director of the center, told the state Xinhua News Agency.

Not so long ago, unhappiness in marriage and dissatisfaction with one’s sex life weren’t considered good reasons for ending a marriage.

“In the past in China, marriages were lifelong. There were lots of love tragedies. People stayed together even though they were not happy,” said Shu, who owns a private 20-employee marriage-services center with psychologists, consultants and lawyers.

“People didn’t know their sex lives could be better,” he said.

Those caught in troubled marriages have few places to turn. Marriage counselors in China are still rare.

“There are 240 marriage counselors in the United States for every one we have in China,” said Zhu.

In most cases, Chinese simply turn inward and decide whether to get a divorce.

“One of my close friends got a divorce. She didn’t tell any of her friends, or even her parents, of her marital problems,” said Li Guifang, an official at a marriage and divorce license office in eastern Beijing’s Chaoyang district.

China’s media may be contributing to the increase, highlighting odd situations that cause a split-up to occur.

“There was a university professor in Nanjing. He and his wife got divorced because of ‘philosophical differences.’ Another couple got divorced because the husband snored too loudly,” said Shu, the marriage counselor.

There may be another reason why more young couples are divorcing. Chinese who are 25 or younger are usually single children, born after the 1979 “one-child” policy was instituted to slow down China’s population growth. Spoiled by parents and grandparents, they often complain about their spouses.

More : seattletimes.nwsource.com

‘’It’s pretty difficult, because I’m not a very organized person,'’ said Courtney, 14. ‘’It’s like going away on vacation for two weeks and then having to unpack.'’ To make the transition easier, her parents bought her a laptop so she can carry her computer with her, and have provided wardrobes in both their homes. Last year, her father moved from Jersey City to Montclair, where Courtney’s mother lives. Both parents have copies of each other’s house keys and are working on coming up with a mutually agreeable set of chores for Courtney.

‘’We co-parent really well,'’ said Courtney’s mother, Patty Dow, who is a counselor. ‘’We work together to make the transition easier.'’

Courtney’s friend Jacinthe Sasson-Yenor has a more complex living arrangement. On school days she stays in her mother’s Jersey City loft, and on weekends she stays in her father’s 1861 farmhouse, also in Jersey City. Every other Saturday, she spends the day with her mother as well. Jacinthe’s mother, Gail Sasson, who is an artist and schoolteacher, thinks that having Jacinthe spend most of her time in one place allows her to stay organized. ‘’This is base,'’ Ms. Sasson said.

But Ms. Sasson wants Jacinthe, 14, to have a real relationship with her father, too. Ms. Sasson grew up in an era when divorced fathers were sometimes seen only about once a year, usually bearing extravagant gifts as stand-ins for a real relationship.

Divorce is hard. It’s a wrenching apart of a household with results that can be as painful as the end of love and as prosaic as dividing up the spices. It’s never easy on the children. These days, with joint custody so common, there is a new issue: How to make the child at home in more than one home.

Stanley Harmon, a divorce mediator in Tinton Falls, says the most important factor is geography. ‘’The way I arrange it, neither parent can move far away,'’ he said. ‘’There’s a clause that essentially keeps them with 20 miles of each other.'’ Any farther and the travel time between mom and dad ‘’is an inconvenience to the child,'’ Mr. Harmon said.

But because custody arrangements can trip up on the slightest details, Mr. Harmon tries to think of all the contingencies ahead of time and have the parents agree. ‘’The arrangement covers every single holiday that you can think of,'’ he said. ‘’And there’s a clause for holidays that may be created in the future.'’

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The divorce industry is growing, as your April 4 news article ‘’A New Kind of Detective for the Longer Goodbye'’ suggests. But it is a cancerous growth that is spreading beyond the very rich and, for some middle-class couples, consuming the marital estate.

As a divorce lawyer, I can testify to the major role that our laws and courts play in this egregious waste. Our adversarial system not only enables but also mandates dueling lawyers and experts to drain family money from the futures of embattled couples and innocent children.

Complicated financial and psychological issues should not be resolved by hired guns, as in corporate disputes, but by judges with the help of impartial experts. If mediation fails, court-appointed fact-finders can contribute more to equitable solutions than the army of mercenaries that now prevails. Divorce may be a contact sport, but it need not be played under the rules of extreme fighting.

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The length of the visit usually depends on more than a father’s personal commitment. It often hinges on how far the child has to travel, how much vacation the father has, and whether or not a new wife, friends or grandparents can help look after the youngsters, Mr. Melamed said.

Logistics can be an issue. Michael Krouch, a 42-year-old social worker in Westchester County, has a rough road to keep a commitment to his children, one that winds through three states week after week.

One Saturday morning saw Mr. Krouch, who is now single, behind the wheel of his Ford Escort by 8 o’clock. He was headed for the Connecticut home of one of his two former wives to pick up their 6-year-old daughter.

It was the first stop in a complicated weekend routine for Mr. Krouch, who takes graduate courses at Columbia University and tends bar some nights to help make support payments. With his daughter scrunched happily in the front seat beside him, he pointed the Escort westward; 75 minutes later they arrived at a park in Teaneck, N.J., where Mr. Krouch’s son from his first marriage, Canaan, 13, was playing in a Little League baseball game.

‘’Two children from two broken marriages who live in two different states doesn’t leave much free time for myself,'’ Mr. Krouch said with soft-spoken acceptance, his former wife Debby seated next to him at the game. ‘’You’re always on the go.'’

Debby Krouch, a United Airlines supervisor, considered transferring to Denver last summer. But, she said, ‘’Canaan needs both his parents, and Mike is a good father.'’

When children live with their mother in a different city from their father and see him only infrequently, the summer reunion can cause extraordinary stress on all sides, family experts said. For men deprecated by their former wives in front of their children, the visit can turn into a crusade for vindication.

‘’I had a client who was a businessman who lost his job and had to drive a cab for a while,'’ said Ellen Weber, a New York psychotherapist. ‘’His esteem hit bottom. If he couldn’t see his son, that meant his wife had triumphed over him once again, so his attitude with his son was, ‘You’re going to come see me even if it kills you!’ ‘’

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‘JOURNEY TO THE HEART OF CHINA'’ does not necessarily explain China, and in a way it makes it more remote than ever. On the other hand, China possibly is beyond explanation, at least in conventional Western terms, and a recognition of the remoteness may be the first step toward any understanding. ‘’Journey to the Heart of China,'’ an NBC White Paper, will be seen on NBC-TV at 8 o’clock tonight.

The two-hour film documentary gives us China largely as mass, as order, as 1.8 billion people with a commonality of culture and purpose. Even as it points out incipient capitalism - a fast-food entrepreneur, for example - or fag ends of Western culture - an orchestra tooting away at ‘’My Heart Belongs to Daddy'’ - and says that China is in flux, the larger message is that there is no flux at all. China is China is China.

Consider, for example, a sequence on a mental hospital in Harbin. Tom Brokaw, who narrates, says that 80 percent of the mentally ill in China are diagnosed as schizophrenics. Chinese doctors, he also says, reject Freud and even the notion of a subconscious, and turn instead to ‘’behavioral treatment'’ and ‘’spiritual support.'’ Only a country sure of itself and its traditions, one suspects, can practice this kind of medicine.

The documentary, as Mr. Brokaw says, is not showing us ‘’the China of postcards and Presidential tours.'’ He says it is showing us ‘’the heart of the real China,'’ and while it may not quite be showing us this, either, it is not because it isn’t trying. ‘’Journey to the Heart of China'’ was filmed, for the most part, by a British company that seems to have had access to places never seen before, at least not on television.

Thus we see, among other things, a prison, a criminal court, even a committee that is adjudicating a divorce. Mr. Brokaw, who visited China with his own crew, tells us that family ties are at the soul of China, but that official policy calls for only one child for each family. The British crew, meanwhile, had filmed the trauma of a mother who gave birth to a daughter, and then feared that her husband might kill the infant because it was not a boy.

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Currently, judges in New Jersey can recommend mediation for any civil matter and are required to send custody litigation through court-sponsored mediation first. Many lawyers routinely advise their divorce clients either to seek mediation before going to court, or practice mediation themselves. Unlike long divorce trials, which can cost each party upward of $20,000, private mediation can often settle all matrimonial claims for under $6,000. This includes the bill for each party’s attorney and the mediator.

‘’If you asked a shrink to devise the most inefficient system for this, it would be the court,'’ said Douglas K. Shoenberg, a lawyer in Summit who exclusively practices mediation. ‘’It creates a battle mentality that goes on forever and is tremendously expensive, when people essentially just want to get things over and move on with their lives. Most divorces can be accomplished without a fight.'’

That may take some understanding on the part of those seeking divorce, however. Lawyers, mediators and the divorced can cite many instances where irritation and utter hatred have led clients to pursue blood more than equity. It is not always the fault of the lawyers, said one divorced woman, recalling her husband whispering in the courthouse hallway that fighting her in court was ‘’more fun than playing tennis.'’ Another recalled how her friend fought for days with a spouse over the ownership of a $10 Pinocchio videotape.

Robert T. Corcoran, a divorce lawyer in Hackensack, said he has repeatedly had to instruct some clients not to pursue the fight they were itching for.

‘’Divorce is very much an emotional exercise,'’ he said. ‘’I bill $250 an hour, and every time I take a case I tell my client that they do not want me going to court fighting over things that are not financially important. But I get a lot of people who say they’d rather give me their money than give it to their spouse. They don’t understand that they are also hurting themselves.'’

More : query.nytimes.com

WITH two children in five now growing up in divorced families, researchers who have studied the long-term effects of marital dissolution are raising serious questions about the value of popular measures that are widely believed to ease the burden of divorce on children.

In fact, some steps long thought to be helpful, including no-fault divorce, delaying divorce until the children are older and court-ordered joint custody, may actually add to the already severe trauma many children suffer in the wake of divorce and sometimes for a decade or more after their parents’ marriage ends, the studies suggest.

These concerns are emerging from research in this country and in Europe, including studies that follow families for years, starting well before signs of marital discord appear.

The commonness of divorce – half of marriages contracted in the 1970’s will not last – may have reduced societal scorn and parental shame, but shows no signs of alleviating the anguish of children. In families split by divorce, the findings suggest, children do best if both parents are consistent in their upbringing and remain physically and emotionally involved in the youngsters’ development. But the commitment and cooperation that facilitates such involvement is often lacking among divorced parents, the research indicates.

When both parents fail to maintain close parental relationships with their children after divorce, the children often do better if the father drops out of the picture altogether, a national survey of 1,423 children indicated. Among those surveyed by Dr. Frank F. Furstenberg Jr. and colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania, children from divorced families who had not seen their fathers in five years were doing better behaviorally and academically than those who had more frequent or recent paternal contacts.

With time, many divorced fathers become increasingly detached from their children. In the national survey, for example, the researchers were startled to discover that 23 percent of fathers had had no contact with their children in the last five years and another 20 percent had not seen their children during the preceding year. When fathers fail to play an active role in the children’s upbringing, the best predictor of their healthy adjustment after divorce is a good relationship with the custodial mother, researchers have found.

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Ruth Ellen Levine, an assistant district attorney in Manhattan, and Leonard R. Sussman, an associate in the New York law firm of Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, plan to be married in March, her parents, Justice and Mrs. Howard A. Levine of Schenectady, have announced.

Miss Levine graduated from Smith College and the Georgetown University Law Center.

Her father is an Associate Justice of the State Supreme Court’s Appellate Division in Albany. Her mother, Barbara Levine, is a social worker in private pratice and divorce mediation in the Albany area.

Mr. Sussman, the son of Leonard R. Sussman of New York and the late Mrs. Charles M. Bucholtz, is a former law clerk to Federal District Court Judge David N. Edelstein in New York. The bridegroom graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, where he also earned a master’s degree in political theory and received a law degree from Columbia University. His father is executive director of Freedom House, the human-rights organization in New York.

Correction: December 16, 1984, Sunday, Late City Final Edition

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Those of us who practice divorce law in Connecticut are proud of our state’s innovative practices (news article, July 29). We are a no-fault state, although fault may be relevant in determining property division and alimony. We have rules that prohibit transfer of assets and the permanent removal of children from the state by one parent without the consent of the other.

The state rules provide for exchange of financial information, to make it difficult to hide assets. There are several opportunities for mediation with experienced family lawyers, family-relations experts and judges, as well as a mandatory parenting education program.

Most contested custody cases are referred to a Regional Court, where ‘’special masters'’ try to help settle them. Those that go to trial are heard for full, consecutive days by a trained family judge.

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While ‘’More Options to Answer ‘What About the Kids?’ ‘’ addresses the impact of divorce on children and provides examples of creative solutions to parent arrangements, mediation is barely mentioned. Mediation best enables couples to reach agreements and protect their children from antagonisms and bad behavior often associated with the divorce process.

Through mediation, couples have an opportunity to communicate directly with the assistance of a neutral facilitator and to recognize their goal of maintaining meaningful relationships with their children, thereby minimizing the harm their children suffer as a result of the divorce.

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DO parents have the right to keep grandparents out of their children’s lives?

DO parents have the right to keep grandparents out of their children’s lives?

That is the question being debated in the Illinois Legislature as the issue of grandparents’ visitation rights advances into uncharted territory.

Over the last 15 years grandparents’ visitation rights have been debated in state legislatures across the country. Today nearly all states have laws allowing grandparents to petition courts to continue seeing their grandchildren in the event of divorce or the death of a child’s parent.

Illinois has gone much further. As a result of a groundbreaking law passed last September, the state allows grandparents to seek visitation even when the parents are married.

But now many Illinois lawmakers say they went too far, and that grandparents should not have legal entree to the lives of intact families. Last week the State Senate passed and sent to the House of Representatives a bill that would essentially repeal the law enacted last fall.

The debate in Illinois has brought new attention to the issue of grandparents’ rights, at the same time raising some difficult questions about contemporary family life:

* Where do the rights of parents end and those of grandparents begin?

* What are the best interests of a child when parents and grandparents fight over visitation rights?

* What is the proper role of legislation in the affairs of intact famililies?

The Illinois law enacted last fall was hotly contested. It was supported by grandparents’ groups and opposed by the Illinois State Bar Association. The bill grew out of a 1985 court case, which was dismissed, in which a married couple was sued by the parents of one partner who wanted to see more of their grandchildren.

A great many state senators in Illinois changed their minds about the extent of grandparents’ rights because of court cases that have been filed as a result of the new law, said Senator William A. Marovitz, a Democrat from Chicago who introduced the revised legislation.

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As concerns grow about surrogate parenthood, no-fault divorce and other issues that affect families, an increasing number of American law schools are reassessing and changing the way they teach family law. They are giving students more practical experience in casework and adding other disciplines, like sociology and economics, to their curriculums.

As concerns grow about surrogate parenthood, no-fault divorce and other issues that affect families, an increasing number of American law schools are reassessing and changing the way they teach family law. They are giving students more practical experience in casework and adding other disciplines, like sociology and economics, to their curriculums.

At New York University, law school students are studying the financial impact of no-fault divorce statutes on women and children. At Benjamin N. Cardozo Law School of Yeshiva University, students analyze how courts use the recommendations of mental health experts in deciding contested child custody cases. At the University of Minnesota, students in a special seminar on children’s rights debate whether contract law principles can be applied to surrogate parenthood arrangements. ‘A Sense of Urgency’

‘’Law schools across the nation are devoting more attention to family law today because there is a sense of urgency about what is happening to the family,'’ said Prof. Millard I. Ruud, executive director of the Association of American Law Schools. ‘’Law schools realize that it is not enough today to give a few lectures about the grounds for divorce, which is the way the subject was taught in the 1950’s. Today each of the nation’s 176 accredited law schools offers at least one comprehensive course and many schools also offer two or three advance electives on topics like children’s rights.'’

Prof. Frank E.A. Sander, who has been teaching family law at Harvard University since the 1950’s, said that it is now at the center of Harvard’s law school curriculum.

Law schools now feel an obligation to prepare future lawyers to work in a society freighted with economic and technological issues that affect the family, he said. Factors Affecting Laws

As examples, Professor Sander cited the influx of women into the work force, the new roles of fathers and scientific advances in obstetrics as changes that have affected laws concerning marriage, divorce and adoption. He said the increased number of appellate court decisions in the area of family law and the difficulty courts have in interpreting longstanding principles like the best interests of the child in the light of new family roles have also made family law more complex.

In these new courses, economic issues are emphasized, according to Prof. Robert J. Levy of the University of Minnesota Law School.

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AFTER five years of stormy marriage, a Long Island couple, whom we will call Ted and Alice, split up last January.

AFTER five years of stormy marriage, a Long Island couple, whom we will call Ted and Alice, split up last January.

Concerned about the future of their 2-year-old son and dismayed at the prospect of a bruising divorce battle that promised to cost more than $20,000 in lawyers’ fees alone, they decided to try a private mediation service, Divorce Mediation Professionals, based in Garden City.

Meeting about a dozen times with the center’s founder, Lenard Marlow, and one of its mental health specialists, the couple came to terms on child custody arrangements and a property settlement and are now legally separated. Mr. Marlow, who used to practice divorce law, eventually will file their agreement in court, which should quickly grant the couple a divorce. Total cost: $6,000.

‘’We have to do business for a lot of years, so we wanted to start out on the right foot,'’ said Alice, a 30-year-old social worker. ‘’There would have been more bitterness, anger and animosity if we went to lawyers.'’

Once used exclusively in labor negotiations, mediation is gaining popularity among bickering businessmen, feuding neighbors and discordant spouses like Ted and Alice who fear that a lawsuit will cost too much time and money.

Unlike arbitration, in which the parties agree to abide by the ruling of an unbiased third party, mediation is meant to be a catalyst that will help the bickering sides reach a settlement. At any point, either party can walk away if not satisfied. And unlike a court proceeding, where a judge or a jury generally returns a verdict for one side or the other, mediation can result in solutions tailored to the needs of both parties.

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Eruptions of violence in divorce, alimony and child custody cases are leading family courts to increase security and try other measures to defuse the tensions of proceedings packed with the explosive emotions of a marriage breaking apart.

Eruptions of violence in divorce, alimony and child custody cases are leading family courts to increase security and try other measures to defuse the tensions of proceedings packed with the explosive emotions of a marriage breaking apart.

The shooting deaths of a judge, a lawyer and a family member involved in an alimony hearing this week in Port St. Joe, Fla., was the latest evidence of a phenomenon that court officials say is a fact of modern life: Violence occurs more frequently in family courts than in the rest of the courts combined.

While acknowledging that they have no nationwide statistics documenting the incidence of courtroom violence, officials say they hear of a growing number of physical attacks in courthouses against court officers, attorneys or parties to a divorce or other related proceeding. ‘Becoming a Powderkeg’

Despite the increasing availability of ‘’no fault'’ divorce, interviews with judges and lawyers specializing in family litigation indicate there has been a rise in protracted divorce and child custody proceedings that are marked by anger and frustration.

‘’The backlog of divorce cases building up in cities like Chicago is helping pile up the pressures on individuals who are going through the worst, most tense period of their lives,'’ said Arthur M. Berman, president of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. ‘’The family court system around the country is becoming a powderkeg and explosions are happening.'’

In Chicago, where Mr. Berman is a practicing lawyer, 25,000 new divorce cases are filed each year. The 29 judges who work exclusively on civil cases related to the breakup of marriages cannot keep up with the backlog, causing some proceedings to drag on for years when complex issues of property and child custody are involved, he said. Judge Accused of ‘Hysteria’

‘’Someone once said that in criminal cases you have bad people acting at their best and in domestic cases you have good people acting at their worst,'’ said Miette Burnstein, chief judge of the State Circuit Court of Broward County in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

On Wednesday, the day after the murderous gunfire in the courtroom in Port St. Joe, a distant North Florida town with a population of 4,000, Judge Burnstein ordered the Broward County Sheriff, Nick Navarro, to double the number of armed deputies assigned to her courthouse to 35 by Monday morning. The sheriff called the directive unnecessary and said it would require shifting his deputies from patrols in high-crime areas. ‘’This hysteria that is in the chief judge’s mind at this time is a fantasy,'’ he said.

In Port St. Joe, local officials were also considering a change in security. There was no special security before Tuesday, when the police said Clyde A. Melvin, who was at an alimony hearing with his former wife, drew a pistol and killed the presiding judge, his wife’s attorney and a member of her family. Incident in Chicago

‘’We weren’t ready to deal with something like this,'’ said Alex Pitts, the court administrator. ‘’These kind of shootings happen in Miami and New York, not Port St. Joe.'’

Outbursts of deadly violence have occurred in recent years against lawyers and judges handling contested family disputes.

In Chicago, a husband killed his wife’s attorney and shot the presiding judge. In Santa Monica, Calif., a woman’s attorney was attacked by her husband, who plunged an icepick into the lawyer’s neck. In New London, Conn., a husband drew a pistol and shot his wife to death in a courtroom. In Fort Lauderdale, in a hall outside the court, a woman shot her husband to death before a divorce hearing.

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When the United Church of Christ published the new edition of its ‘’Book of Worship'’ in December, it introduced a section on prayers suitable for anyone going through a divorce.

When the United Church of Christ published the new edition of its ‘’Book of Worship'’ in December, it introduced a section on prayers suitable for anyone going through a divorce.

Similar prayers have been introduced by many other denominations over the past decade, including the Lutheran, United Methodist, Episcopal and Presbyterian churches and the Unitarian Universalist Association. The Reform movement of Judaism is discussing a similar concept.

Previously, prayers and services for people going through a divorce have not been part of the liturgy of most Jewish and Christian groups. Need for Ritual Growing

Ministers say these new prayers and their accompanying rituals are being included as congregations seek ways to ease the sense of personal failure and alienation from religious life that their members seem to experience as they go through divorce. The ministers interviewed suggest that the need has been growing as divorce has become more widespread.

‘’Although we had centuries-old ways of giving support at other critical moments of life, we were finding the church had nothing to offer at this very painful time,'’ said Hoyt Y. Hickman, the director of worship resource development for the United Methodist Church in Nashville.

These new rituals carry no legal ramifications. Thus they should not be confused with the annulment tribunals of the Roman Catholic Church or the divorce tribunals of Orthodox Judaism.

The Catholic Church does not grant religious recognition to divorce at all, although its authorities can grant an annulment following civil divorce. Orthodox Judaism does not automatically recognize civil divorce, but its tribunals can grant religious approval. Without annulment or approval, there can be no religious remarriage ceremony, either Catholic or Jewish. Little Demand So Far

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Mr. Busch’s mother, Doris Busch Boskey, 62, of Dix Hills, described him as ‘’sweet, talented and brilliant,'’ a former medical student who left Mount Sinai Medical School in 1991 because of a kidney ailment.

Through a spiritual awakening that led him to Israel and an interest in Orthodox Judaism, he became progressively more depressed and troubled, she said. He did not seek medical attention for either his kidney disease or his increasingly depressed and emotional state, although Mrs. Boskey’s husband, Howard Boskey, a psychiatrist, attempted to persuade him to seek counseling. Neighbors in Borough Park said he often walked around talking to himself and wearing heavy clothes in the middle of the summer.

Mrs. Boskey, a divorce mediator, said her son had been visiting Israel for long periods of time for the last five years. He joined what she called ‘’a cult, a very extreme group,'’ whose philosophy was ‘’hard to explain,'’ she said. But her son said they had hypnotized him there ‘’and that can be very bad if you don’t know what you’re doing, if you’re untrained,'’ Mrs. Boskey said.

For the last year and a half, her son had lived with her and Mr. Boskey, who tried to dissuade him from moving to Borough Park. ‘’He was adamant about moving to a more religious community. But he needed help. He was just depressed over finding a place for himself,’’she said.

Mrs. Boskey said she learned of her son’s death on the television news last night.

‘’I can’t believe it happened,'’ she cried. ‘’I don’t why they couldn’t have found another way. I don’t know why they had to kill my son.'’

Handling mentally ill people is a difficult challenge for the police. Last October, a Queens resident, Kevin Cerbelli, was shot to death in a police precinct station house after attacking officers with a screwdriver and a knife.

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THE lot of a divorced woman is not a happy one. That is the message of ‘’A House Divided: The Economics of Divorce,'’ tonight’s offering of ‘’Currents,'’ on Channel 13 at 8:30 P.M. We are told that despite changes in the divorce laws meant to give the former wife a larger share of the family assets, she still faces a dim future, especially if she has young children to raise or is trying to rejoin the job market at the age of 50 or older.

The assembled experts make the case that after devoting themselves for years to keeping house and raising children, women have trouble finding good jobs, and their labors for the family are not adequately valued in the accounting after a breakup.

On the other hand, a husband complains about the settlement given his former wife of 18 months. It was, he says, a ‘’take my credit card and have a good time'’ relationship, and she is now receiving substantial alimony.

Marty Goldensohn, the host, holds quiet conversations with the opposing lawyers in the celebrated case of O’Brien v. O’Brien, in which the New York courts awarded $188,000 to a former wife on the ground that she had helped her husband through medical school. Her attorney hails the decision as an acknowledgement of a property right in exchange for her contribution. His attorney says the judges are responding to pressure from the women’s movement.

Everyone agrees that divorce is a painful affair no matter who gets what, and the final portion of a generally sober, if not exhilarating, half-hour focuses on mediation as an alternative to courtroom battles. Unstartlingly, divorce lawyers are not wild about the innovation; one argues that it gives the more dominant partner an advantage. The example offered here, however, indicates that the mediator, himself a lawyer, makes a point of alerting both parties to their rights. And once an agreement is drawn up, they have an opportunity to go over it with their own attorneys.

The impression you’re likely to carry away is that whatever the deficiencies of mediation, it can’t be worse than a bruising divorce fight, and this program, produced by Kate Manning, does a service in bringing the possibility to the attention of any who may have use for it.

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The Senate Family Services Committee opened hearings yesterday on proposals to revamp New Jersey’s way of divorce. The main speakers were members of the Commission to Study the Law of Divorce, which had called for a greater use of mediation.

Among the measures before the Senate is a bill, already passed by the Assembly, that would limit the power of Family Court judges to order divorced fathers to pay their children’s college tuition. The committee chairman, Senator Joseph Cafiero, a Cape May Republican, said the bill was just one of about 20 divorce-law issues before the committee.

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Your report on divorce mediation recalls an old saying: “The rain falls equally on the just and the unjust, but more on the just because the unjust have stolen their umbrellas.” In divorce, the ideal is to keep everyone under the umbrella. But the spouse without a financial grip, usually a dependent wife, is not well-served either by a lawyer who concentrates on wrestling or a mediator bent on reaching an agreement at all costs. What can be crucial is, not the process, but clear knowledge of the intricacies of property division and support, the firmness to deal with bullying as well as psychological sensitivity to a woman who is under extreme emotional pressure. Without this kind of help from a lawyer or mediator – and perhaps a therapist – a powerless wife and her children are sure to get very wet. LOIS BRENNER Manhattan, Jan. 15 The writer, a matrimonial lawyer, is a partner at Kurzman Karelsen & Frank.

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Elizabeth Alice Gottlieb, the daughter of Maria Tucci and Robert A. Gottlieb of New York, was married last evening to Michael Jacob Young, the son of Marilyn B. Young of New York and Ernest P. Young of Ann Arbor, Mich. Elizabeth K. Shequine, a town justice of Washington, N.Y., officiated at the home of the bride’s parents in Clinton Hollow, N.Y.

The bride, 29, is a theater and film director, and the bridegroom, 35, is a filmmaker, both in New York. She graduated magna cum laude from Amherst College. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University and received a master’s degree in film production from New York University.

The couple teach at the New York Film Academy, which the bridegroom helped to found.

The bride’s father was the editor in chief of Simon & Schuster, Alfred A. Knopf and The New Yorker magazine, all in New York. Her mother, an actress, recently appeared in ‘’Collected Stories'’ at the Manhattan Theater Club.

The bridegroom’s mother and father are history professors. He is at New York University and she is at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. The bridegroom’s stepmother, M. Brady Mikusko, is an independent divorce mediator in Ann Arbor.

Correction: July 2, 2000, Sunday A report last week about the marriage of Elizabeth Alice Gottlieb and Michael Jacob Young reversed the institutions at which the bridegroom’s parents are history professors. His mother, Marilyn B. Young, teaches at New York University; his father, Ernest P. Young, at the University of Michigan.

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Your April 26 front-page article on the feud between Senators Frank R. Lautenberg and Robert G. Torricelli of New Jersey reminded me of the couples I work with as a divorce mediator. I try to encourage them to concentrate on the goals they have in common, like putting the best interest of their children before their own needs.

Senator Lautenberg and Senator Torricelli should do the same: put aside pettiness, competition for power and their egos and concentrate on the interests of the people who elected them, the principles of the Democratic Party that they are both committed to, and the issues of the day.

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Dividing up assets in a divorce is hard enough already. Now, it’s getting tougher to count the money.

The popularity of hedge funds, stock-option grants and other investments that can be tricky to value is giving warring spouses something new to fight over. At the same time, the IRS is keeping a sharp lookout for cases where two separate taxpayers both claim the kids as dependents, a big no-no.

The list of potential blunders facing splitting spouses is head-spinning: Dividing a stock portfolio the wrong way can trigger vastly unequal capital-gains-tax hits. Overlooking the mysterious QDRO form (pronounced “KWA-dro") can make a mess of dividing a 401(k).

All of this is proving to be a boon to the nascent industry of “certified divorce financial analysts.” For fees of $150 to $250 or so an hour, these advisers help to navigate the economic aspects of divorce, as opposed to the legal issues like custody that are the domain of divorce lawyers.

In recent years, about 2,500 of these divorce specialists have been trained, according to the Institute for Divorce Financial Analysts, with new registrants increasing about 25% a year. Financial-services giants including Merrill Lynch & Co., Morgan Stanley and Ameriprise Financial Inc. have them on staff as well.

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I read with approval Emily Jane Goodman’s article ('’With New Law, Divorce Fees Soar,'’ Jan. 13) on soaring divorce fees. You serve the public well when you inform them accurately about the effects of the New York equitable distribution statute on legal fees.

There is a cost factor which was not specifically addressed, however, that is the level of the war between the parties (extremely antagonistic litigants cause frightfully high fees). Often a recalcitrant spouse who resists divorce can cost the other spouse extra months before resolution.

In candor (and at the risk of losing clients), I urge divorcing couples to attempt going to divorce mediation wherever possible to ease the burden on psyche as well as the pocketbook. ELIZABETH K. SHEQUINE Poughkeepsie, N.Y.

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Marina Camila Benzaquen, a daughter of Jennifer Pinto Safian and Norman S. Benzaquen, both of New York, was married on Thursday to Darren L. Schlanger, a son of Dr. and Mrs. Gabriel Gary Schlanger of West Orange, N.J. Rabbi Marc D. Angel officiated at the Pierre in New York.

Mrs. Schlanger, 26, is an associate in the New York office of Blank Rome, a Philadelphia law firm. She graduated from Brown and received a law degree from New York University. Her father is a managing partner in Gilder Gagnon & Howe, stockbrokers in New York, and is the chairman of the board of the Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Her mother is a private art dealer in New York; she is also a family and divorce mediator. The bride is a stepdaughter of Diana Benzaquen and of A. Chester Safian.

Mr. Schlanger, 29, is an associate in the New York office of Covington & Burling, the Washington law firm. He graduated magna cum laude from Columbia and received his law degree cum laude from Harvard. His mother, Florence Schlanger, works in West Orange as the chief operating officer of WestLake Internet Training, a company in Washington that trains Web site developers. His father is a telecommunications consultant who specializes in technology standards.

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Kimberly Diana Manocherian, a daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Fred Manocherian of Scarsdale, N.Y., was married yesterday to Jerome John Strelov, the son of Anne Strelov of New York and the late Jerry Strelov. The Rev. Donald Harrington performed the Unitarian ceremony at the Plaza hotel.

Mrs. Strelov, executive director of the New York Health and Racquet Club chain, is an alumna of New York University. Her father, a real-estate developer in New York, is founder and president of the M.R. Foundation, a nonprofit organization that provides educational services on automobile safety issues such as drunken driving. Her mother, Jennifer Manocherian, is director of divorce mediation at the Family Institute of Westchester in Mount Vernon, N.Y.

Mr. Strelov is a partner in the New York law firm of Blumenthal & Lynne, which specializes in entertainment law. He graduated magna cum laude from Syracuse University and is an alumnus of the New York Law School. His mother is founder of Anne Strelov Interiors, an interior design concern in New York. His father was founder and president of Strelov Furniture Inc., a manufacturer in Paterson, N.J.

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IN a scene from a marriage gone awry, Michael, an accountant, and his wife, Karen, sat at the front of the conference room in an office complex in Westbury, sniping at each other.

‘’You have been controlling me with money for 12 years, Michael,'’ said Karen, a homemaker living in a four-bedroom home, with a pool, two children and a nice car, somewhere on Long Island.

‘’Other people call it fiscal responsibility,'’ Michael snapped back. ‘’I pay the bills. Haven’t I always given you what you wanted? Haven’t I bought you things?'’

Karen looked stricken. Her eyes bulged. She fiddled nervously with her engagement ring, the one she didn’t want counted in the equitable distribution of their assets because Michael had given it to her before they tied the knot.

‘’He doesn’t even hear a word I say,'’ she lamented, as Michael continued to grouse about her demands. ‘’That’s the problem with our whole marriage.'’

Karen had had enough. She and Michael were splitting up.

The audience tittered.

Although it seemed uncomfortably real, Michael and Karen’s marital spat was really a rehearsal for the latest twist on the interactive dinner theater circuit: Divorce Theater. Michael was being played by a professional actor, George Lytle; Karen was really Beth Painter.

Designed to show that no divorce is simple, and to advocate mediation over litigation, the tragicomedy – partly scripted, partly improvised – is the culmination of Harriette Steinberg’s professional fantasy.

Ms. Steinberg, who has been married for 36 years, is a lawyer with a practice in Westbury. She thought dramatizing scenes from divorce conflicts would give her clients a better look at their own behavior.

So to illustrate the common issues of custody, visitation and division of assets, she enlisted Art Feinglass, the head of Access Communications, a Manhattan-based company that specializes in using drama and humor in training programs on diversity and sexual harassment, along with dinner theater murder mysteries. Mr. Feinglass, himself twice divorced, moderates the show. Throughout, members of the audience asked the unhappy couple questions, only to watch them launch back into the arguments destroying their marriage.

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In an effort to encourage families to resolve disputes outside the courtroom, the State Senate approved a bill yesterday that would require people seeking divorce, child support or custody of children to meet with a mediator before clashing in court.

Under the bill, couples would be required to meet at least once with a court-appointed mediator to try to craft a voluntary agreement. The requirement would not apply to domestic-violence cases. Under current law, mediation is voluntary.

‘’Those of us who support mediation see mediation as a means to cut down on court costs and to promote a less combative arena for divorcing couples to work out their differences,'’ the bill’s co-sponsor, Senator Walter Kavanaugh, a Somerville Republican, said in a statement.

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The current divorce numbers do not change anything about the past - but the past is past.

The current divorce numbers do not change anything about the past - but the past is past.

When I was the youngest child in my family, my parents were divorced. This was many years ago when it was not quite the style, and certainly was never discussed in public.

I grew up with memories of their arguments and shouting, and hear them to this day.

When political arguments become shouting matches, for some of my friends are very vocal about their politics, my only response is to look at them - and laugh.

Divorce is never an easy matter for young people to understand. It wasn’t then, and it isn’t now. What differs is the current acceptance, the words ‘’custodial,'’ ‘’parenting,'’ etc.

Privately, it’s a long, lonely road that must be traveled until the reality of divorce is understood. And by that time, you’re married, have children and will do almost anything to protect them from the unhappiness and loneliness you knew for so long.

Janice Cohn and Gary Skoloff, thank you for your article. MILLI JANZ Pompton Plains

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A. The latest trend in marriages seems to be shorter honeymoons, but more of them. During my own recent ceremony the minister accidentally asked, “Do you take this man to be your first husband?”

Getting a divorce is usually not cheap. One reader from Belle Mead, N.J., who recently separated from her husband and now wishes she had tossed the groom and kept the bouquet, writes: “During the last meeting with my divorce lawyer, instead of seeing her face, I envisioned a giant parking meter, clicking off $100 bills every minute. Her eyes were going ‘ka-ching! ka-ching!’ ”

It would seem that a flat fee could solve that problem. For a straightforward, uncontested divorce, usually meaning one that doesn’t involve property division or child custody, a legal clinic can save you money and offer a flat fee. The clinics charge as little as $100 to $750 to handle a divorce, not including filing fees, and can be found in the Yellow Pages.

The clinics are essentially high-volume, high-efficiency law firms for simple cases, according to Grier Raggio and Michael Stutman, the authors of “How to Divorce in New York” (St. Martin’s Press, 1993, $15.95). Clinic lawyers are available for consultation, but costs are kept low through the use of standardized forms and extensive help from paralegals, the authors say.

But if your divorce involves a lot of wrangling, you’ll be hard pressed to find a lawyer willing to offer a reasonable set price.

“I suppose there will always be lawyers willing to place a ceiling on the total cost, but it would have to be a pretty high cap from the lawyers’ standpoint in order to prepare for the worst,” says Larry Fox, a lawyer and president of Legal Vision Inc., a New York consulting firm. Essentially, the client would be buying an insurance policy against cost overruns, but would most likely end up paying considerably more than if the billing had been hourly.

“Anything’s possible these days,” says Judy Boies, a matrimonial lawyer at Boies & Lazarus in Manhattan, “but why would you want a flat fee?”

She points to an inherent conflict between the lawyer’s interest in rapidly disposing of a case that is not going to make much money and the client’s insistence on an equitable distribution of assets. Whatever the outcome, both client and lawyer can feel shortchanged.

However, this does not mean you can’t contain your legal costs. Like retailing, selling automobiles and banking, the business of law is fast becoming a service industry in flux, one in which power has been shifting to the consumer – in this case, the client. Law firms have been dropping the nonrefundable retainer, meaning that should you decide to switch lawyers in the middle of a proceeding you are entitled to repayment of the unused portion of the retainer. And many states, including New York, are requiring law firms to itemize their bills.

Of even bigger impact has been the downsizing of the legal profession. Although the number of practicing lawyers has increased in the last 30 years from about 300,000 to more than 800,000, growing four times as fast as the country’s population, fewer graduates are finding work in those big, prestigious – and expensive – law firms.

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As psychotherapists and mediators we appreciated your article, ‘’Making a Case for Staying Together.'’ The impact of divorce on children is traumatic and often long lasting. Divorcing and already divorced parents, while they usually have the best interests of their children at heart may, nevertheless, have a difficult time communicating in a respectful and civil manner. This can create an on-going atmosphere of bitter antagonism. Where this occurs it is all the more difficult for children to work out their feelings regarding their parents’ separation.

In our practice, we have found that where parents are unable to talk with one another without it deteriorating into a battle, a trained neutral can be helpful. Mediation can lower the heat while heightening the awareness of the parents regarding the needs and best interests of their children.

While no panacea, we have found that mediation can lay the groundwork for better communication between divorcing and divorced parents, which can only accrue to the benefit of their children.

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You, You, You – you really are special, you are! You’ve got everything going for you. You’re attractive, witty, brilliant. “Gifted” is the word that comes to mind.

Childhood in recent decades has been defined by such stroking – by parents who see their job as building self-esteem, by soccer coaches who give every player a trophy, by schools that used to name one “student of the month” and these days name 40.

Now, as this greatest generation grows up, the culture of praise is reaching deeply into the adult world. Bosses, professors and mates are feeling the need to lavish praise on young adults, particularly twentysomethings, or else see them wither under an unfamiliar compliment deficit.

Employers are dishing out kudos to workers for little more than showing up. Corporations including Lands’ End and Bank of America are hiring consultants to teach managers how to compliment employees using email, prize packages and public displays of appreciation. The 1,000-employee Scooter Store Inc., a power-wheelchair and scooter firm in New Braunfels, Texas, has a staff “celebrations assistant” whose job it is to throw confetti – 25 pounds a week – at employees. She also passes out 100 to 500 celebratory helium balloons a week. The Container Store Inc. estimates that one of its 4,000 employees receives praise every 20 seconds, through such efforts as its “Celebration Voice Mailboxes.”

Certainly, there are benefits to building confidence and showing attention. But some researchers suggest that inappropriate kudos are turning too many adults into narcissistic praise-junkies. The upshot: A lot of today’s young adults feel insecure if they’re not regularly complimented.

America’s praise fixation has economic, labor and social ramifications. Adults who were overpraised as children are apt to be narcissistic at work and in personal relationships, says Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University. Narcissists aren’t good at basking in other people’s glory, which makes for problematic marriages and work relationships, she says.

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It sounds so reasonable, logical and sane. Instead of hiring lawyers to help them wage world war three, a couple in the middle of a divorce go to a less pricey, more friendly mediator to sort out their problems calmly and sensibly.

Two adults, in the presence of an impartial third party who has been trained to deal with marital conflict, should be able to negotiate a reasonable settlement over finances and child contact, the new term for what used to be called “visiting rights”.

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Aside from having one’s bladder used as a bouncy castle, living almost exclusively on a diet of Rennies, lusting after a Stannah Stairlift and recognising that, this time around, one’s waist may actually have disappeared never to return, one of the downsides of pregnancy is the possibility that about 30 per cent of viewing will suddenly become off-limits.

For example, the week before last I decided to watch Baby Be Mine, a BBC1 two-parter about overseas adoption, and all in a regular day’s documentary-viewing for the professional sofa-spud. I lasted precisely nine minutes. The Romanian orphanage did for me - specifically the sight of row upon row of sad little swaddled babies without any mummies and daddies staring blankly at the camera through the gnawed bars of their metal cots.

Anyway, I cried uncontrollably for 20 minutes before waddling, snottily, still snivelling, down to the kitchen to make another round of peanut butter and marmalade toast. Needless to say, there didn’t seem much point in asking the BBC for a DVD of part 2.

Judging by the trailers for C4’s How to Divorce Without Screwing Up Your Children, which featured a selection of wide-eyed and baffled small persons in tight close-up, all the better to see the tears streaming down their dear peachy little cheeks, I didn’t fancy my chances with this one, either. But unless I was going to exist solely on a diet of Desperate Housewives, Strictly Ice Dancing and peanut butter and marmalade toast, I figured I’d better give it a whirl.

The first thing that will have struck any viewers who aren’t actually dead (having passed away with the excitement of it all sometime during week 2 of Celebrity Big Brother, but whose bodies have yet to be found) is that in choosing to appear on a programme entitled How to Divorce Without Screwing Up Your Children, and having offered up the emotions of their beloved offspring to the attentions of millions of unknown voyeurs, the adult participants are potentially doing just that.

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Divorce makes men richer and women poorer. The finding has astonished researchers involved in a major study of the effects over time on the partners of a failed marriage, and confounds the common belief that both partners suffer financially.

The research tracked 10,000 people over a decade and found that men’s disposable income increases by an average of 15 per cent after divorce, while women see theirs fall by around 28 per cent, mirroring the average gain they experience on marrying.

‘Men bring more, economically speaking, to relationships and walk away with more, too,’ said Dr Jonathan Scales, a research fellow at the Institute of Social and Economic Research, which carries out the British Household Panel Survey with the University of Essex.

‘This is the first time the effect of divorce on the same group of people has ever been tracked over a long period of time, and we were amazed by the results,’ said Scales.

The survey, funded by the Economic and Social Research Council with the support of the Future Foundation, returned each year from 1991 to question the same group of people about the effect on their lives of issues from the state of the labour market to workplace stress.

The sharp difference in earnings between the sexes partly explains why women see their incomes fall so dramatically after divorce. Unmarried women earn, on average, around 14 per cent less than male colleagues.

‘There are also certainly divorced men who are getting their children brought up on the cheap,’ said Scales, citing the Child Support Agency’s report that only 48 per cent of absent fathers regularly pay full child support, while 29 per cent pay nothing at all.

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Divorce - it’s not something you plan for. Even when one out of three marriages is predicted to go that way, it’s as welcome a prospect as a motorway pile-up; where children are involved, it’s something to dread. But (as with road accidents) we assume there will be help on hand if the nightmare comes true.

In Britain, most divorcing and separating couples don’t need help to work out their childcare arrangements. But a significant number come to an impasse and often end up in family court, whose job is not just to resolve the conflict but to restore the peace, so children and parents can get on with the business of living.

That’s the official line, anyway. But last week Dame Margaret Booth, a former High Court judge who heads the National Family and Parenting Institute, said that our family courts fell way short of the mark. Speaking at a reception to discuss a recent conference on a therapeutic approach to family justice, she said our system was decades behind Australia, New Zealand, the United States and Norway - especially when it came to involving fathers in their children’s upbringing.

‘It is really a shame,’ she said, ‘that this country is so insular and does not learn from what others have been doing successfully for so long. I believe quite profoundly… that the time has come to remove our blinkers.’

Her remarks were endorsed by Dr Hamish Cameron, a consultant child psychiatrist who has been an expert witness in many family court cases. We needed a new system, he said, because the old one fails children by not understanding their emotional needs - or indeed the needs of those looking after them.

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In the late ’90s, Sue Maniloff’s husband kept telling her how much money they were making in the stock market. “Get it,” she’d say to him. “I want to see green. I want to see cash. I don’t care what’s on paper.”

Her father agreed with her. “He kept warning us over and over and over that it was time to get out,” say Ms. Maniloff, 42, an advertising sales account executive. But her husband, Howard, 43, a senior account manager for a computer consulting firm, didn’t listen to his wife or her dad. Now, with the Dow Jones Industrial …

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People don’t ever get married thinking that a divorce is in their future. But if you and your spouse decide to untie the knot, there are various routes you can take, from having your lawyers slug it out in court to filing divorce documents yourselves.

The right choice will depend on your circumstances. But when it comes to financial matters such as dividing up property, be aware that long, emotional arguments can mean big delays and hefty legal bills. To avoid this, try to “approach [divorce] like a business deal and leave the emotion and anger outside the door,” suggests Barbara Shapiro, a certified divorce financial analyst with HMS Financial Group, Dedham, Mass.

The Cost of Tradition

In a traditional divorce, both individuals hire lawyers. Most cases are settled before trial. But if the case actually goes before a judge to resolve differences over financial matters or child custody, “litigation can take a few years,” says Glen Rabenn, a divorce lawyer in Seal Beach, Calif.

Attorney fees often run from $250 to $450 an hour. A trial alone, depending on the complexity of the case, could cost each side $50,000 to $60,000, says Mr. Rabenn.

Expect to pay for every phone call with your lawyer. To curb costs, Andrew Hoffman, a certified divorce financial analyst in Mandeville, La., recommends keeping a divorce notebook: If you think of something to tell your attorney, “write it down and at some point communicate it in an orderly fashion.” Consolidate calls. It’s cheaper to call once with four things than to call four times.

If your divorce is highly contentious, hiring an attorney may be your best option. Your attorney does the talking for you, so contact with your spouse is limited, and a judge is there to ensure a fair and equitable split of your assets.

More : online.wsj.com

Children as young as five are to be given leaflets telling them how to cope with divorce.

Up to 9,000 primary school pupils will receive the leaflets to help them deal with their feelings as their parents split up.

The scheme, by the charity NCH Child Action plans to help children whose education can be affected by family problems.

But the leaflets, to be distributed in County Durham, have been criticised by divorced parents and educational psychologists.

They say it could raise unnecessary fears among children whose parents are happy together.

Different leaflets have been designed for children aged five to eight and eight to 11.

Eileen Dunn, spokeswoman for the Durham Family Mediation Service, said: “There is still some stigma around separation.

“What we do not want is the children to feel isolated at that time.”

More : news.bbc.co.uk

Three children locked away in darkness and filth by their mother for seven years and given little contact with the outside world.

The question Austrians are asking now: Did social workers fail to react despite signs the children were suffering neglect?

The case is also focusing attention on the dilemma of children when parents fall into conflict and divorce.

It is alleged the three girls, now aged 14, 18 and 21, were isolated by their mother in a house near the city of Linz.

Reports in local media say the house has just one electric light and no running water.

Social network

Details of the case first appeared at the weekend in a Vienna daily newspaper.

The publication Oesterreich reported that the children developed their own form of language during their years of isolation and that they played with mice and gave them pet names.

The story has reminded many of the circumstances surrounding Natascha Kampusch, the young Austrian woman who was kidnapped at the age of 10 and held in a tiny cellar for eight years.

She escaped last August. Austrian authorities say the two cases are entirely different but politicians and journalists are asking questions similar to those raised in the Kampusch case.

How could this happen in a country with a strong social network and why did no-one act earlier?

Olaf Kapella, a former youth worker and now researcher with the Austrian Family Research Institute, said he could not understand why it took so long for authorities to act.

“I think something more could have been done earlier. For me it’s a very important question in our society, with all of its institutions, that children can just be out of sight for such a long time.”

The mother began the children’s isolation by barricading herself in the house with them shortly after her divorce seven years ago.

The father of the children, a local judge, has told the media he does not want to comment as it “would not help anyone".

More : news.bbc.co.uk

Aydarus Yusuf has lived in the UK for the past 15 years, but he feels more bound by the traditional law of his country of birth - Somalia - than he does by the law of England and Wales.

“Us Somalis, wherever we are in the world, we have our own law. It’s not Islamic, it’s not religious - it’s just a cultural thing.”

The 29-year-old youth worker wants to ensure that other members of his community remain subject to the law of their ancestors too - he helps convene an unofficial Somali court, or “gar", in south-east London.

Aydarus is not alone in this desire. A number of parallel legal universes have been quietly evolving among minority communities. As well as Somali customary law, Islamic and Jewish laws are being applied and enforced in parts of the UK.

Islamic and Jewish law remains confined to civil matters. But the BBC’s Law in Action programme has learned that the Somali court hears criminal cases too.

One of the most serious cases it has dealt with was the “trial” of a group of young men accused of stabbing a fellow Somali.

“When the suspects were released on bail by the police, we got the witnesses and families together for a hearing,” says Aydarus. “The accused men admitted their guilt and apologised. Their fathers and uncles agreed compensation.”

More : news.bbc.co.uk

“Sometimes we just have to do what is right,” said the man who drove the changes through, Deputy Justice Minister Hugh Henry.

The period for an uncontested divorce comes down from two years to one year, and for a contested divorce from five years to two years.

“We have to legislate for Scotland as we find it,” said Mr Henry, “not for the society we grew up in or the church we belong to.”

The issue divided the parliament and the parties. But when the votes came, they were decisive, 91 to 34 for the one year divorce and 93 to 31 for the two year contested divorce.

It went against a recommendation from the justice committee, which had tried to seek a compromise of 18 months for uncontested divorce and three years for contested divorce.

The Liberal Democrats insisted that the coalition stick by its agreement to bring the divorce period down to the lower figures.

Only a handful of Labour MSPs rebelled - Karen Gillon, Michael McMahon, Alasdair Morrison and Mary Mulligan.

More : news.bbc.co.uk

Ministers said that they had put children at the centre of the proposals, which include more access to mediation for couples splitting up.

Unmarried fathers who are registered on a birth certificate will be given parental rights and responsibilities.

There are also plans to allow couples to get divorced quicker, but there are no legal access rights for grandparents.

We asked what you think of the bill - here are your emails.

Reform is needed to reflect the changing shape of society. However, why are there always bills to support families, or single parents. It seems this country is far too much children orientated. I am a young married female who contributes to society aswell and I would like to see more support for young people who work full time, commute to work, have a mortgage, pay their full council tax and then want to be able to enjoy life without paying through the nose for it or having to barge through hoards of families. There are never couples only restaurants or cinemas for instance and couple holidays are so expensive!
Gill, Blairgowrie, Perthshire

You cannot base legislation around just one case. Yes, some parents are ‘bad’ parents and should not have access to their children. But the vast majority of separated parents only want what is best for their children. The current system discriminates against the ‘absent’ parent, even if that parent has no desire to be separated from their child and is a good parent. Give every parent parental rights, and take that right away from bad parents through the courts if necessary. Do not exclude all ‘absent’ parents from contact with their child due to failings of a minority of ‘bad’ parents.

More : news.bbc.co.uk

Charles Currey had argued his ex-wife was awarded their £1.5m West Sussex home because of “subliminal gender discrimination” on the part of a judge.

He also said he was not given enough money in the settlement, claiming the value of shares his wife inherited had not been taken into account.

His appeal was dismissed on Wednesday on the grounds of fairness and money.

Relationship with children

Mr Currey’s wife Henrietta, 45, was allowed to stay in the home, Watersmeet, in the village of Bosham, on the banks of Chichester Harbour.

The High Court judge ruled making her move out would affect her relationship with the couple’s five children.

Mr Currey, a 57-year-old boat builder, claimed that as he worked from home he had played an equal part in their upbringing and told the Court of Appeal the judge had not considered his relationship with the children.

He also argued his wife had got twice as much as him in the divorce settlement, saying it would not have happened if it had been a woman seeking the divorce.

The court heard his wife’s inherited shares in property group De Walden Estates brought her income of £450,000 a year, making her worth more than £45m.

More : news.bbc.co.uk

The ex-wife of an Arab millionaire has lost £17.5m of her £26.3m divorce settlement but gave “heartfelt thanks” after regaining access to her children.

Mona Al Khatib was initially awarded the record payout in March 2002.

But husband Dr Abdullah Masry, 56, did not pay and returned to Saudi Arabia with four of their five children.

After mediation at the Court of Appeal in London both parties agreed that the children will spend holidays with their mother but will live in Saudi Arabia.

‘Hard work’

In a statement read out by lawyers outside court Mrs Al Khatib said being reunited with her children was “the most important thing".

The statement said: “She would like to say that the financial aspect of the litigation is, to her, insignificant compared to the resumption of her relationship with her children.

More : ews.bbc.co.uk

Utah’s judges will get raises and most divorces will be mediated, but there will be no additional court clerks for rural areas.

While the top budgetary request from the courts was granted, the 2005 Utah Legislature did not fund many things the courts had asked for. But justice will go on, say court officials.

Judicial raises were the top priority this year, said Assistant State Court Administrator Rick Schwermer.

“We demonstrated that judges’ salaries had fallen behind those of other states and the salaries of other lawyers in public service,” Schwermer said.

Second District Judge Jon Memmott, who chaired an ad-hoc committee that studied judicial salaries, told lawmakers early in the session that Utah’s judges make $104,000 while judges in nearby states average $111,000.

Schwermer said the issue is not pay equity for current judges necessarily but rather offering a salary that will be attractive to experienced attorneys who may apply for future judicial positions.

“Future vacancies need to be attractive to public and private sector attorneys,” Schwermer said.

Court officials asked for a 7 percent increase, which would have cost an additional $921,000, to bring salaries up to $111,280. This week, the court section of the budget was approved for a 6 percent increase.

More : deseretnews.com

It’s father’s day in the UK this Sunday and while it may be a happy time for many families, thousands of men up and down the country won’t be able to see their children because of legal orders.

They say that the courts allow their former partners and wives to ignore rulings.

This denies them access to their children and some say the system is in urgent need of reform.

The government is planning to take what’s described as a ‘hard look’ at the family law system so Breakfast is exploring the issues surrounding divorce and the role of the father.

More : news.bbc.co.uk

People with disputes which would normally go to trial in the Royal Court can now opt for an alternative.

Mediation has already proved a success in Jersey’s Petty Debts Court, where over two thirds of cases are now solved before they go to trial.

It is hoped that success can be mirrored in the Royal Court with judges allowed to refer parties to mediation.

In other places where alternative dispute resolution has been introduced, legal costs have been cut and those involved have indicated a greater satisfaction with the outcome.

Financial disputes are believed to be most suited to dispute resolution, particularly those concerning debts and divorce settlements.

More : news.bbc.co.uk

The Commons public accounts committee said targets should be set for the number of cases referred to mediation.

A third of divorcing couples seeking legal aid had not even been told about mediation, a survey suggested.

The MPs’ report suggested mediation in divorces was “quicker, cheaper and … less acrimonious” than court cases.

Divorce mediators are neutral third parties in whose presence partners can discuss terms of separation, without having to go to court.

Never discussed

A report by the National Audit Office suggested that, of 149,000 disputes supported by legal aid between October 2004 and March 2006, only 29,000 attempted mediation.

It added that of 148 people surveyed, a third said mediation had never been discussed as an option.

The public accounts committee report said, on average, a legal aid-funded case that is referred to court costs about £930 more than a mediated case.

More : news.bbc.co.uk

On Tuesday, Lord Chancellor Lord Irvine announced that ministers would be seeking the repeal of the provision, part of the Family Law Act 1996, introduced under John Major, as it had proved unworkable.

More : news.bbc.co.uk

Hello. There are around 145,000 divorces every year, a number that’s falling slightly but it’s still more than one for every two weddings. Divorce or separation is a bad enough experience for most people without having to worry about money as well, but if you don’t you could face a penniless future, so it’s very important to be clear about how you and if you have them, your children, will afford to live after the separation from your partner. It’s also important that you feel and are treated fairly. In April a new system of assessing maintenance through the Child Support Agency begins, not before time, some may say, but very few people understand the rules new or old or what they’ll mean.

Since December 2000, divorcing spouses have had the right to a share of each other’s pension, or at least to apply for a share, but new evidence suggests that many wives don’t get their fair share even under the new rules. How do you split investments you own together? - can you stay in your home? - will you be able to claim social security benefits? - and are pre nuptual agreements a good idea? Whatever your question you can call Money Box Live now, 08700 100 444 And with me to day to answer your questions about the financial aspects of divorce and separation are Donna Bradshaw, a director of independent financial advisors Fiona Price and Partners, Angie Fenn, an advice worker from the National Council for One Parent Families, and Maggie Rae, a family law partner with solicitors Clintons. And the first question is from Ann in Bristol - Ann, your question?

ANN: Oh hello. My husband and I own and run a joint business. I also have my own freelance work which amounts to less than a quarter of our joint income. The family house is also tied to the business. Both my husband and myself would like to buy the other out of the business, and I just wondered what criteria the court would use to decide who was allowed to retain the business, and if I am not successful how will I be compensated for my loss of earnings?

More : news.bbc.co.uk

A UK website designed to comfort children whose parents are splitting up has been launched.

The site, created by the children’s charity NCH, attempts to “demystify” the divorce process for children and offer a wide range of advice and information on how to cope.

More : news.bbc.co.uk

The British government has withdrawn plans to reform the divorce law in England and Wales which were to have been introduced next year.

It told parliament that pilot schemes designed to save marriages and promote mediation had been disappointing.

The changes had been designed to reduce acrimony by making irretrievable breakdown the basis for all divorces, with fault not a factor.

The existing system will now stay and adultery and unreasonable behaviour will continue to be the main grounds for divorce.

More : news.bbc.co.uk

The Family Mediation Helpline will point partners to mediation services to resolve issues around family breakdown.

It does not aim to get couples back together but to help them address arrangements such as the children, the family home and their finances.

The helpline is available by calling 0845 60 26 627 or visiting www.familymediationhelpline.co.uk.

Mediation option

Trained staff who can put couples in touch with family mediators in their area will operate the helpline.

It will provide general information on family mediation and whether it would be suitable for particular cases.

The initiative was launched by Family Justice Minister Harriet Harman at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

She said: “Family breakdown is a stressful and distressing experience. Particularly for children if they see their parents fighting in court.

“Other means of resolving problems can achieve better results in a more constructive way.

“Family mediation offers couples better chance of finding an amicable outcome and reducing the chances of further conflict.”

More than 150,000 couples get divorced in England and Wales each year and an estimated 100,000 couples who live together separate.

More : news.bbc.co.uk

My immediate reaction was one of astonishment and shock. I then asked two questions:

What did the Pope actually say? Where did he say it?

To take the second question first, the Pope was speaking to an audience of Church lawyers [who handle annulments] rather than to practising lawyers who deal with the general public. His words have been translated from Italian. As a result, some of the sense may have been lost.

The context of his speech was the importance of marriage and the fact that, in the eyes of the Church, marriage is for life. Towards the end the Pope said that lawyers must avoid ‘collaborating’ with divorce.

If to ‘collaborate’ means that a lawyer should turn away a client who may wish to have a divorce, then that is wrong. A Christian lawyer must always bear in mind the command to love one’s neighbour and must not, as in the parable of the Good Samaritan, pass by on the other side.

Words of the catechism

The difficulty is that the Pope then seemed to distinguish between actually helping someone to obtain a divorce and dealing with side issues, presumably arrangements for the children and property matters.

More : news.bbc.co.uk

The Lord Chancellor, Lord Irvine, said the results of pilot schemes designed to promote mediation had proved “disappointing".

The changes would have brought to an end the concept of fault in divorce proceedings and were due to be introduced next year.

The chief executive of relationship counsellors Relate, Sarah Bowler, said she was “astonished” and “surprised” by the news.

She told the BBC she was not expecting the plans to be delayed, but was instead “expecting to have the news of a date of implementation".

She said: “I wouldn’t have said they weren’t working in that global sense.

“The feedback we have been having of the meetings with a marriage counsellor project, which was associated with all this, was that the people who came found them extremely helpful and came in much larger numbers than we would have expected.”

According to the government, just 10% of divorcing couples who took part in the test schemes chose to take “information meetings” which would become compulsory under the proposed changes in the law.

Explaining the move, a spokeswoman for the Lord Chancellor’s office said the cost of researching and setting up the pilot schemes had been £6m, but denied that the decision not to proceed straight away was cost-driven.

She said: “The simple fact is the pilot projects are not working. The aim was for them to reduce conflict; if only 7% of people are going into mediation and 39% say they are more likely to consult a solicitor, clearly they are not working.”

More : news.bbc.co.uk

The government must support marriage because of the cost to society of divorce, the Lord Chancellor has said.

Lord Irvine insisted divorce caused jobs to be lost due to distress, disrupted family life, and strained health and education services.

But he also would be targeting the legal aid cost of £61m last year.

He said: “The cost of divorce - personal, social and economic - underline the Government’s duty to support marriage as the one tried and tested means of delivering stability children crave.”

A third of marriages ended in divorce, but when marriages hit trouble, people should be clear and certain about their rights and obligations, Lord Irvine told marriage counsellors at Relate.

“People whose relationship has begun to fall apart need to know what steps they can take to save their marriage, if that is possible, and to end their marriage if it is not.”

But he added: “The government and the whole community should work together in partnership to support the family and build a stronger society.”

The government - which was spending £3m on grants to marriage support and research agencies - wanted to promote marriage as an institution and raise public awareness of such services.

The government was fully committed to implementing Part 2 of the 1996 Family Law Act, the Lord Chancellor insisted.

More : news.bbc.co.uk

Four out of ten marriages end in divorce and marital break up is estimated to cost billions of pounds a year to taxpayers.

Central government’s efforts to reduce divorce by encouraging mediation weren’t taken up by couples and the initiative has now been taken up by local communities where the emphasis is being placed on couples strengthening their relationships even before they get married.

Richard Miron has been looking at one novel programme now being run for people contemplating marriage.

Two couples sit around discussing marriage.

One younger couple is excitedly planning the ceremony and their future married life together.

The second older couple are there to offer advice and support, before and even after the wedding has taken place.

More : news.bbc.co.uk

Tape Transcript by JANE TEMPLE

MONEY BOX LIVE

Presenter: Vincent Duggleby

Guests Helen Howard, David Davidson

TRANSMISSION 13th NOV 2000 1500-1530 RADIO 4

ANNOUNCER : Now it’s two minutes past three - time for MONEY BOX LIVE with Vincent Duggleby.

DUGGLEBY Good afternoon. On this MONEY BOX LIVE we’ll be dealing with your questions about divorce and separation. According to the latest figures 160,000 couples petitioned for divorce each year - -r looked at another way, two out of five marriages are likely to fail, some in a matter of months. So, if you’re in the process of splitting up, then you can ring us for advice on 08700 100 444 What you need to bear in mind is that divorce law has been radically changed in recent years and that process is continuing. A couple of weeks ago in the case of White versus White - -he House of Lords ruled that the assets there should be divided 50/50. This seems to overturn the 1973 matrimonial causes act which was based on the financial provision for reasonable needs and some experts believe the case marks a revolution in family law. Pension splitting is another key issue. From the 1st December it’ll be possible under the Welfare Reform and Pensions Act of l999 for rights to be transferred to husband to wife, or vice versa as part of a divorce settlement and replaces an interim solution known as ‘ear marking’ which raised almost as many problems as it solved. The fact is that for most couples there simply isn’t enough money to go around - and matters are made worse by the cost of maintaining second families, especially if you get involved with the Child Support Agency. Changes here are also in the pipeline which will be based on a fixed percentage of income. So if you need advice on any aspect of divorce now’s your chance to talk it through with my two guests Helen Howard the author of the Which Guide to Divorce, and a solicitor and mediator at Richard Howard and Company - David Davidson is the head of family law at Charles Russell. The number is 08700 100 444 and I should mention we shall mainly be dealing with the law as it applies in England and Wales but we have no problems with John who’s in Birmingham - are you there John ?

More : news.bbc.co.u

Breaking up is hard to do, not to mention expensive, as any of the more than 1 million couples who divorce each year can tell you. In fact, the decision to end a marriage is often the prelude to serious financial pain marked by a battle over the division of property, lofty legal bills and each spouse feeling as if he or she got the raw end of the deal.

It doesn’t have to be that way. If you and your spouse ever decide to part company, collaborative divorce may be the best way to avoid the rancor and expense that typically accompany a split. This relatively new way to formally end a marriage emphasizes cooperation over confrontation, and problem solving over grievance airing. And it rests the decision-making power in the hands of the couple rather than those of a judge.

Here’s how it works: Couples agree in writing to forgo the courts and negotiate a fair settlement directly. Unlike in mediation, where splitting spouses are guided by a neutral third party, husband and wife are each assisted by a lawyer so they have the benefit of individual counsel. If the two sides can’t agree, the lawyers can’t represent their clients in any future court case–a clause intended as an incentive for everyone to get it right the first time. “In traditional litigation, the attorneys fight to get the biggest piece of the pie for their client,” says Dallas family lawyer Larry Hance. “In collaborative law, the focus is on a settlement that works for everyone.”

Playing nice pays off. In addition to the promise of a more equitable settlement, the costs are much lower, with estimated savings from 40% to 65%, largely because there’s less likelihood of a protracted legal battle. If a typical divorce case runs about $35,000, the bill for the same split negotiated collaboratively would more likely be $12,000 to $20,000. The result is, there’s more left for you and your ex to divide.

A collaborative approach isn’t right for every divorcing couple, however. If you can’t bear to look at your spouse anymore, let alone sit down to talk with him or her, the traditional route probably makes more sense. (See “Split Decisions” on page 50 for other legal options.) But if you like the idea of a less rancorous approach and are eager to save a few bucks, collaboration can make sense. This is what you need to know to make the process work for you.

• HIRE THE RIGHT HELP Collaborative law is a relatively new field, so you want to make sure you retain a lawyer who is well versed in the process. More than 7,000 lawyers in 40 states have gone through formal training, and the best way to find a good one is through word of mouth. But if you don’t know anyone who has gone the collaborative route, you can get referrals to local practitioners by using the search engine of the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals at collaborativepractice.com.

More : money.cnn.com

Racing against a Saturday deadline, Delta Air Lines and its pilots union continued talks Friday that could determine if the pilots go on strike and whether the nation’s No. 2 air carrier stays in business.

Both the Air Line Pilots Association and Delta management say they hope to reach an agreement on a new labor deal. And most airline analysts still think it’s unlikely the situation will escalate to the point of a strike and shut down of the airline, which flies more than 300,000 passenger a day on about 1,700 daily flights.

But if talks fail to reach agreement, there is not much that’s clear about what would happen next.

The union is arguing that if an arbitration panel weighing its contract with Delta rules against it, it intends to go on strike, even if it means the bankrupt airline must halt operations permanently. The only thing it won’t say is when such a strike would start, only that it would be some time after April 17, or after the upcoming holiday weekend.

The panel’s deadline is April 15, at the start of the holiday weekend. But it is not likely to announce a decision until after the holiday weekend.

“We will strike when we determine it is prudent and advisable,” said union spokeswoman Kelly Collins. She said notice of a strike could range from a few hours to 30 days. She wouldn’t comment on the view that a strike would mean an end to Delta, and its 6,000 members six-figure jobs, other than to point to a union statement that, “We will not capitulate to these demands based on a fear of what may lie ahead. We understand the risks.”

More : money.cnn.com

Delta Air Lines and its pilots union could soon be flying into uncharted legal territory that could determine if the pilots go on strike and whether the nation’s No. 2 air carrier stays in business.

Both the Air Line Pilots Association and Delta management say they hope to reach an agreement on a new labor deal in talks set for this week. And most airline analysts still think it’s unlikely the situation will escalate to the point of a strike and shut down of the airline, which flies more than 300,000 passenger a day on about 1,700 daily flights.

But if talks fail to reach agreement, there is not much that’s clear about what would happen next.

The union is arguing that if an arbitration panel weighing its contract with Delta rules against it in the next week, it intends to go on strike, even if it means the bankrupt airline must halt operations permanently. The only thing it won’t say is when such a strike would start, only that it would be some time after April 17, or after the upcoming holiday weekend.

“We will strike when we determine it is prudent and advisable,” said union spokeswoman Kelly Collins. She said notice of a strike could range from a few hours to 30 days. She wouldn’t comment on the view that a strike would mean an end to Delta, and its 6,000 members six-figure jobs, other than to point to a union statement that, “We will not capitulate to these demands based on a fear of what may lie ahead. We understand the risks.”

On the other side is Delta management, which argues that it needs the panel to give it the power to throw out the current labor deal with the pilots. But it says it hopes to keep negotiating to reach a new concession pact with the union, even if it is given that power. And it is arguing that even if the current labor deal is thrown out, a strike by the pilots union would be illegal under the Railway Labor Act, (RLA) the unique labor law that covers both railroads and airlines.

“We believe that a strike would not be legal until all the processes of the RLA are complete, that includes mediation and a 30-day cooling off period,” said Delta spokesman Bruce Hicks. “If there’s a strike, we would be ready to seek all appropriate legal remedies. A pilot strike that is not halted by the court would be fatal to Delta Air Lines.”

More : money.cnn.com

Egyptian women are at a distinct disadvantage in access to divorce for no reason other than that they are women. The threat leveled against Amira Ahmad by her husband is not an idle threat: it is backed by profoundly discriminatory laws and practices premised on women’s inferiority, particularly in matters related to the family.

The Egyptian government has created two widely disparate systems for divorce, one for men and one for women. Egyptian men have a unilateral and unconditional right to divorce. They never need to enter a courtroom to end their marriages. Egyptian women, on the other hand, must resort to Egypt’s notoriously backlogged and inefficient courts to divorce their spouses.

In the courts, women face procedural and evidentiary hurdles to divorce that are inherently discriminatory. Men, who can divorce their spouses at will with an oral renunciation later registered by a religious notary, can simply sidestep these procedures. Obtaining a divorce can also take years as men manipulate the many defenses and tactics Egyptian law reserves only for them. As a result, many Egyptian women, like Amira Ahmad, avoid the courts and are left with two equally distressing options: either remain in an unwanted marriage and possibly endure physical and psychological abuse, or beg their husbands to divorce them, giving up everything they own and cherish in return. The consequences of this two-tiered system are often financially and emotionally devastating for women. In some cases, they can be life-threatening.

Egypt’s discriminatory divorce system is among the starkest examples of Egypt’s oppressive personal status laws. These personal status laws–common in the region–govern marriage, divorce, custody, and inheritance and advance a model of the family based on the superiority of men to women. Laws and practices as applied violate the rights of Egyptian women to equality before the law, nondiscrimination, and equality in marriage and divorce, as enshrined in international human rights law.

Egypt’s divorce laws discriminate against women in the procedures they impose and in their substantive provisions, reflecting a system of unequal access and treatment that obstructs many women from seeking divorce. The judicial process is fraught with difficulties, delays, high costs, and varying standards. In order to initiate a divorce providing full financial rights, an Egyptian woman must show evidence of harm inflicted by her spouse during the course of their marriage, often supported by eyewitness testimony. Alternatively, since 2000, Egyptian women can file for “no-fault” divorce (khula) if they agree to forfeit their financial rights and repay the dowry given to them by their husbands upon marriage. Khula, adopted as a way to afford women easier access to divorce, still requires women to petition the court to terminate their marriages. The option is most accessible to women with the financial means to renounce all financial claims, or those with limited means but who are desperate for a divorce.

The government requires all women seeking divorce, including victims of domestic violence, to submit to compulsory mediation. When men initiate divorce, the government does not require them to make an effort to reconcile. The fact that only women must submit to mediation in the name of family preservation implies that only divorces initiated by women destroy the family. Compulsory mediation for women, and only women, is also rooted in biased notions of a woman’s inability to make rational decisions about important life choices without interference.

Many Egyptian women find themselves impoverished and facing homelessness while they navigate the judicial jungle of divorce in Egypt. Egyptian women who have separated from their husbands and have filed for divorce in Egypt’s courts are deemed automatically ineligible for any form of government-sponsored financial assistance, since they are officially still married. Without a divorce certificate in hand, women are provided with no social assistance; they are deemed to be the financial responsibility of their husband and not the state.

The legal and bureaucratic nightmare of obtaining either a fault-based or no-fault divorce does not end once a divorce is finally granted. For many Egyptian women, a divorce is tantamount to destitution because of the government’s failure to enforce court rulings for alimony and child support. The Egyptian government’s attempt to remedy this problem through the establishment of a specialized alimony and child support fund is a step in the right direction. However, the fund should not be a substitute for more aggressive enforcement of court rulings.

More : hrw.org

When women initiate divorce in Egypt, it can take several years in the country’s backlogged, inefficient, and biased courts. While millions of Egyptians seek divorce every year, only a limited number of these cases are finalized. For example, only 62 out of the 5,252 divorce cases filed in a Cairo court in 2002 were resolved by January of the following year.89 Egyptian women pay the heaviest price for these delays since only they need to resort to the courts for a divorce. While many government officials see these delays as a necessary by-product of a busy and overcrowded judicial system, the routine delays represent an endurance test for many women desperately seeking a way out of painful and potentially dangerous situations. The limbo that these women face, never knowing if a divorce will eventually be granted, also prevents them from moving on with their lives and charting a course for future safety and happiness.

The very nature of the antiquated and overburdened Egyptian court system fosters delay. Judges in Egypt, on average, hear sixty to seventy cases per day.90 As a result, the postponement of court hearings and the slow progression of cases is the norm. For example, when Human Rights Watch visited the Zananiri Civil Court of Personal Status and Family Affairs in Shobra on June 17, 2004, there were over one hundred cases scheduled to be heard by a single judge that day. Attorneys specializing in personal status matters told Human Rights Watch that the delays are compounded by the fact that judges rarely maintain regular business hours.91 Both women seeking divorce and their attorneys often spend days waiting in courtrooms for appearances, each time discovering that their case has once again been postponed due to a judge’s unavailability. The multiple responsibilities of judges hearing divorce cases exacerbates the problem. For example, judges play a significant role in monitoring elections to both the government-appointed consultative council (majlis al-shura) and parliament (majlis al-sha`b), tasks that have been known to result in further delays.

Delays are also caused by a variety of laws and procedures injected into the divorce process, which are rooted in sexist and misogynist notions about women. Compulsory reconciliation efforts employed only when women seek to end their marriages not only infantilizes women but also mandates delays. A number of laws, such as the one conditioning a woman’s alimony on her obedience to her husband, are also readily available to men facilitating the further delay of divorce proceedings. Husbands regularly file appeals contesting the grounds for divorce outlined by their wives. Prior to the passage of the 2004 law establishing a family court system,92 husbands could appeal the divorce up to the Court of Cassation. Judges admitted that the system has been prone to abuse by ill-intentioned husbands. For example, one judge who asked to remain anonymous laid out a typical timetable in this fashion:

Normal [fault-based divorce] cases take four to five months. But, if the husband is out of the country it takes longer. We give him three months [to respond to the notice]. If the husband wants to keep her [the wife] in limbo then he can go to the Court of Cassation [to appeal], which can take several years.93

The fact that women seeking divorce confront such a biased legal system is particularly unfortunate given the fact that all the women Human Rights Watch interviewed had resorted to the courts only after they had exhausted all other options. According to one attorney, “The courts are used as a last resort. Women endure everything for years before they go to the courts

More : hrw.org

Divorce can be an ugly affair. No one knows that better than ex-spouses, their families and the attorneys who represent them.

That’s why about 15 local attorneys recently were trained in collaborative law, a process in which disputes–in this case, divorce–are settled outside of court.

“People don’t know until they go through a divorce how horrible it is,” said family law attorney Stacey Strentz, who has litigated hundreds of divorces over 13 years with the Stafford County firm Rinehart, Lowery, Strentz & Butler, P.L.C. “It’s so expensive and so contentious and there are so many casualties.”

Strentz chairs the local group of collaborative attorneys and recently hosted an information session at her Fredericksburg home to get more family-law attorneys, mental-health professionals, financial advisers and other parties involved in the collaborative law movement.

Collaborative law differs from mediation in that mediators are barred from giving clients legal advice.

At minimum, the collaborative process involves four parties: husband, wife and an attorney representing each. All four sign a contract agreeing to negotiate and resolve all divorce-related issues (property, child custody, etc.) outside of court.

The contract also stipulates that both attorneys withdraw from the case if either client decides to pursue litigation.

“It’s a better way to work through the process,” Strentz said.

Virginia’s divorce rate was four divorces per 1,000 population in 2004, the latest full-year divorce statistics reported by the National Center for Health Statistics. The national divorce rate in 2004 was 3.7 divorces per 1,000 population.

Virginia had 29,411 divorces and 61,990 marriages in 2004, according to NCHS.

More : fredericksburg.com

Getting a divorce in The Bahamas may now be as simple as the click of the mouse.

Mark Stein, President of MediationFirst and the brainchild of OurDivorceAgree-ment.com, explained the online site is a divorce agreement preparation website for relatively cooperative couples who have agreed to divorce.

The key benefits of the website is that it is for couples who decide they want to get divorced and want to do it as quickly, as inexpensively and as positively as possible.

Its slogan is “save time, save money” and Stein was quick to point out the website is not a substitute for good, sound legal advice.

“It is a substitute for two attorneys handling the entire divorce paying both of them hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, and taking lots of time,” said Stein.

A 20-year divorce mediator from Louisville, Kentucky, and the author of Resolving Conflict Once and For All, Stein revealed that couples make all of the decisions with his help.

Stein said the idea of the website came about with the realization of the growth of the internet and the fact that he could offer the same service to people with cooperative spirit anywhere.

While it cuts his fee tremendously, the online site offers an entire divorce package for a mere fraction of the cost of his in-office service.

“My hourly fee is $175 and they, for about a little more than the price of one hour of my fee, can get everything that I provide themselves,” he disclosed.

OurDivorceAgreement.com is not for couples who are adversarial or if there is any spousal or child abuse involved.

More : freeport.nassauguardian.net

Whatever you do, try to keep your case out of divorce court — the system stinks,” writes Judge Roderic Duncan in A Judge’s Guide to Divorce: Uncommon Advice from the Bench, new from Nolo. “But if your spouse won’t cooperate and you must go, here’s everything you need to know about surviving the ordeal.”

The veteran divorce-court judge reveals court as a clumsy tool for breaking up a family. It’s adversarial, intrusive and costly. When the law and fairness don’t jive, the judge must side with the law. And when the couple has children, the courtroom experience makes long-term enemies of the two people most important to the kids.

So Duncan recommends you and your spouse reach your own agreements, and he offers plenty of sage advice on how to accomplish this — from kitchen-table settlements to mediation to collaborative divorce. Almost always, the court will rubberstamp its approval of your settlement.

But for those bound for court, he offers a wealth of tips on how to make your court appearance as successful and stress-free as possible. After thousands of cases, he knows all the blunders and booby traps that await you. He lays out an insider’s guide to survival — everything from preparing your presentation to courtroom etiquette.

A Judge’s Guide to Divorce backs up its points with recollections both tragic and comic. After all, the judge has seen it all (like the time he ordered a man to give the baby he was holding to its mother — the man tossed it to a friend headed for the door). The book delivers straight talk from a compassionate man who has witnessed the carnage of divorce court firsthand.

More : businesswire.com

When women initiate divorce in Egypt, it can take several years in the country’s backlogged, inefficient, and biased courts. While millions of Egyptians seek divorce every year, only a limited number of these cases are finalized. For example, only 62 out of the 5,252 divorce cases filed in a Cairo court in 2002 were resolved by January of the following year.89 Egyptian women pay the heaviest price for these delays since only they need to resort to the courts for a divorce. While many government officials see these delays as a necessary by-product of a busy and overcrowded judicial system, the routine delays represent an endurance test for many women desperately seeking a way out of painful and potentially dangerous situations. The limbo that these women face, never knowing if a divorce will eventually be granted, also prevents them from moving on with their lives and charting a course for future safety and happiness.

The very nature of the antiquated and overburdened Egyptian court system fosters delay. Judges in Egypt, on average, hear sixty to seventy cases per day.90 As a result, the postponement of court hearings and the slow progression of cases is the norm. For example, when Human Rights Watch visited the Zananiri Civil Court of Personal Status and Family Affairs in Shobra on June 17, 2004, there were over one hundred cases scheduled to be heard by a single judge that day. Attorneys specializing in personal status matters told Human Rights Watch that the delays are compounded by the fact that judges rarely maintain regular business hours.91 Both women seeking divorce and their attorneys often spend days waiting in courtrooms for appearances, each time discovering that their case has once again been postponed due to a judge’s unavailability. The multiple responsibilities of judges hearing divorce cases exacerbates the problem. For example, judges play a significant role in monitoring elections to both the government-appointed consultative council (majlis al-shura) and parliament (majlis al-sha`b), tasks that have been known to result in further delays.

Delays are also caused by a variety of laws and procedures injected into the divorce process, which are rooted in sexist and misogynist notions about women. Compulsory reconciliation efforts employed only when women seek to end their marriages not only infantilizes women but also mandates delays. A number of laws, such as the one conditioning a woman’s alimony on her obedience to her husband, are also readily available to men facilitating the further delay of divorce proceedings. Husbands regularly file appeals contesting the grounds for divorce outlined by their wives. Prior to the passage of the 2004 law establishing a family court system,92 husbands could appeal the divorce up to the Court of Cassation. Judges admitted that the system has been prone to abuse by ill-intentioned husbands. For example, one judge who asked to remain anonymous laid out a typical timetable in this fashion:

Normal [fault-based divorce] cases take four to five months. But, if the husband is out of the country it takes longer. We give him three months [to respond to the notice]. If the husband wants to keep her [the wife] in limbo then he can go to the Court of Cassation [to appeal], which can take several years.93

The fact that women seeking divorce confront such a biased legal system is particularly unfortunate given the fact that all the women Human Rights Watch interviewed had resorted to the courts only after they had exhausted all other options. According to one attorney, “The courts are used as a last resort. Women endure everything for years before they go to the courts.”94

More : hrw.org

Call it the stealth New Year’s resolution, the last-resort plan few people are willing to discuss during the year-end focus on holiday cheer and family.

But after the seasonal festivities wind down and the relatives return home, couples on the brink of divorce often find their way to attorneys’ offices in January and February to start the process, legal experts say.

“A lot of people try to stick it out through the holidays,” said Kathleen Miller, a certified financial planner and certified divorce financial analyst in Kirkland, Wash. “They don’t want to disrupt the family at that time. It’s not unusual that come January you start to see a lot of filings.”

Some couples may be prompted by introspection that’s common around the end of the calendar year, said Sharyn Sooho, a divorce attorney and co-founder of DivorceNet.com, an online resource based in Newton, Mass.

“We want to start the new year with a fresh start, and for some people that means getting out of what they think of as a bad marriage,” she said.

Others may be more calculating in their timing. Employment and tax information begins to arrive at the end of January, making it easier to find out about earnings and any bonuses, commissions, investment dividends or interest the couple may share, she said. “It’s financially a good time to start the process.”

Sooho, who’s specialized in divorce law for 28 years, estimates about a third of new divorce proceedings are initiated in the first two months of the year, with the other big spike coming in September at the beginning of the new school year.

All of which can leave a hole in the pocketbook, not to mention the heart. A relatively straightforward divorce can run each party $2,000 on the low end and easily reach five times as much if it’s drawn out, contested or requires valuation of complex assets such as a business or stock options, said Sheryl Garrett, editor of the new book “Surviving Divorce” and a certified financial planner in Shawnee Mission, Kan.

More : money.cnn.com

Having one of those jaw-clenching financial “discussions” with your (spendthrift, tight-fisted, financially clueless or controlling) spouse?

Well, you’ll be happy to know that many successful marriages are generously seasoned with episodes of anger and disagreement.

At least that’s what psychologist John Gottman and his team at the University of Washington have found after conducting extensive research on married couples in what is often called “the love lab” – where researchers observe a couple’s communication styles and physiological changes during conversation to help predict whether they’re likely to divorce.

“(I)n the ecology of marriage a certain amount of negativity is required for the union to thrive,” Gottman writes in his book, “Why Marriages Succeed or Fail.” “(A)iring a complaint – though rarely pleasant, makes the marriage stronger in the long run.”

In marriages that thrive, that “certain amount of negativity” isn’t the embittered, permanent variety that’s infused with truckloads of contempt, defensiveness and stubbornness.

Here are some key signs that your money fights are moving from healthy to toxic for your relationship, according to Gottman:

You criticize, attacking your partner, not just a specific behavior. “I wish you’d pay the bills on time, so we can avoid paying late fees” is a legitimate complaint. Saying, “Why can’t I ever trust you to pay on time?” is criticizing.

You show contempt, insulting or psychologically abusing your partner. During an argument about spending, a wife says to her husband, “Why are you always so irresponsible? You never pay attention to how much you spend. You’re so selfish.”

More : money.cnn.com

Having one of those jaw-clenching financial “discussions” with your (spendthrift, tight-fisted, financially clueless or controlling) spouse?

Well, you’ll be happy to know that many successful marriages are generously seasoned with episodes of anger and disagreement.

At least that’s what psychologist John Gottman and his team at the University of Washington have found after conducting extensive research on married couples in what is often called “the love lab” – where researchers observe a couple’s communication styles and physiological changes during conversation to help predict whether they’re likely to divorce.

“(I)n the ecology of marriage a certain amount of negativity is required for the union to thrive,” Gottman writes in his book, “Why Marriages Succeed or Fail.” “(A)iring a complaint – though rarely pleasant, makes the marriage stronger in the long run.”

In marriages that thrive, that “certain amount of negativity” isn’t the embittered, permanent variety that’s infused with truckloads of contempt, defensiveness and stubbornness.

Here are some key signs that your money fights are moving from healthy to toxic for your relationship, according to Gottman:

You criticize, attacking your partner, not just a specific behavior. “I wish you’d pay the bills on time, so we can avoid paying late fees” is a legitimate complaint. Saying, “Why can’t I ever trust you to pay on time?” is criticizing.

You show contempt, insulting or psychologically abusing your partner. During an argument about spending, a wife says to her husband, “Why are you always so irresponsible? You never pay attention to how much you spend. You’re so selfish.”

More : money.cnn.com

Extra” has confirmed that the divorce of Catherine Keener and Dermot Mulroney has been finalized. The notice of entry of judgment was entered in court yesterday, and their marriage status will officially end on Dec. 19.

Neither party will pay child or spousal support. They will have joint legal custody of their eight-year-old son, Clyde.

The document reads, “There are irreconcilable differences between the parties that have led to the irredeemable breakdown of the marriage, and there is no possibility of saving the marriage, through counseling or other means.”

Their divorce was settled through mediation and neither party had an attorney present. They both agreed to a confidential martial settlement agreement.

Catherine and Dermot wed in 1990. They split in May 2005.

More : extratv.warnerbros.com

Couples contemplating a divorce in Utah but who have not resolved everything might be surprised to learn that a year-old law now requires them to take part in mediation before they continue.

The law applies only in situations where one party contests the divorce.

The couple must find one of the state’s 125 court-approved mediators and attend at least one session to hear how mediation works and discuss disputed issues before their case can proceed in court. They don’t have to resolve anything, but they are required to take part in good faith.

Mediation can be excused in situations involving domestic violence or where one partner is afraid of the other.

Mediation also can be done over the phone, or with both parties (and their lawyers) in separate rooms, with the mediator going from room to room. Low-income couples can get financial assistance for up to four hours of mediation.

At first, this sounds like one more hoop to jump through for people already struggling with an emotionally draining time, Kathy Elton admits.

But Elton, who directs the state’s Alternative Disputes Resolution Programs, says the long-range benefits for many couples are worth it, especially if they continue until they’ve worked out a settlement that can be presented to a judge. (It’s not uncommon for lawyers to review the settlement first.)

More : deseretnews.com

There were 3,969 contested divorces filed in 2004 out of a total of 12,482 filings.

Individuals without access to a computer or who prefer to use the telephone can call the Divorce Mediation Help Line at 1-800-620-6318. They can get written forms and other types of help by calling.

Logging on to www.utcourts.gov/mediation/divmed/ provides general information about divorce mediation.

In cases of domestic violence or any form of abuse — even it has not been reported — individuals can get forms to be excused from mediation at www.utcourts.gov/mediation/divmed/forms.asp that can be submitted. The reasons for the excuse must be explained to the state program coordinator, but excuses can be granted if one party is afraid of the other person. This same Web address provides forms for financial assistance. Those without access to a computer can call the help line listed above.

If a judge has issued a protective order or a no-contact order, individuals seeking mediation must contact a lawyer or the court because the order must be modified before any mediation session occurs.

More : deseretnews.com

A PROJECT that helps children get through their parents’ divorce has been awarded a funding boost. Family Mediation Lothian was given £192,463 for its Time To Talk project.
The project encourages children over the age of 12 to complete a “parenting plan” that identifies their key needs, such as who they want to live with or which school to attend. The mediators also help children negotiate with the children until an agreement is in place.

Time To Talk also provides one-to-one support sessions as well as group work and a website to enable young people to share their feelings with those in a similar situation.

The award was announced by the Big Lottery Fund. Kate Shirres, acting director of Family Mediation Lothian, said: “[This award] will enable us to provide essential support for young people whose parents are going through a separation or divorce.”

More : edinburghnews.scotsman.com

The couple separated two weeks ago after moving back to the U.S. from their European home in Girona, Spain and are currently in mediation to reach a divorce settlement.

“The craziest thing is, we’re closer now and better friends than ever before.” Armstrong said in the Austin American-Statesman.

“We’re truly committed to maintaining a good relationship, but not a marriage. We both have (legal) representation, and we’re doing this peacefully.”

The Armstrongs have been married for five years and separated in late January. The 31-year-old cyclist, who grabbed his record-tying fifth straight victory in cycling’s most prestigious race this summer, later agreed to enter counseling in an effort to salvage their marriage.

Armstrong’s wife and children – 3-year-old Luke and 22-month-old twins Isabelle and Grace – were with the cyclist in Paris on July 27 to celebrate his Tour victory.

They left Paris together and spent time on a family vacation before returning to Austin late last month. The plan to maintain separate homes in the city.

“It’s an unfortunate situation,” Kristin Armstrong, 32, told the Statesman. “We are making the best of it for the sake of our kids.”

Armstrong, also a victor over testicular cancer, met his wife in January 1997, just weeks after he had completed intense chemotherapy to treat an advanced stage of the disease. The two started dating in June 1997 and were married 11 months later.

Because Lance’s cancer treatments could have made him sterile, he had banked his sperm before chemotherapy. All three children were born through in vitro fertilization.

Kristin Armstrong has said several events related to her husband’s celebrity and cancer comeback had strained the marriage. The couple plans to remain in Austin.

“The kids are our first priority,” said the cyclist. “We’re also going to be respectful of each other. Neither of us wants to get in the situation where when we drop off the kids, we can’t look at each other.”

More : edition.cnn.com

A Florida judge approved the settlement Friday between Michael Kantaras, who was born Margo Kantaras, and his ex-wife, Linda Forsythe, ending a seven-year dispute that went all the way to the Florida Supreme Court and back before the intervention of “The Dr. Phil Show” raised the prospect of compromise.

After two and a half days of guided mediation, the couple agreed on custody terms for Matthew, 16, Linda’s child from a previous marriage, who Michael adopted, and Irina, 13, born through artificial insemination from Michael’s brother.

The teenagers will spend four more evenings with their mother than their father each month, although both parents will share decision-making authority in their lives, according to their lawyers.

The international media spectacle surrounding the case often lost sight of the children as it focused on the opposing interest groups who used the case as a flashpoint for their issues. But now the parties are united in their characterization of the settlement as a prime example of a divorced couple putting the needs of their children ahead of their own.

“The time is now to bring stability to the lives of the children,” said Linda Forsythe’s lawyer, Mathew Staver, also president and general counsel of Liberty Counsel, a Christian firm dedicated to “advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of human life and the traditional family.”

“If these two can reach a settlement, anyone can,” said Michael Kantaras’ lawyer, Karen Doering of the National Center for Lesbian Rights, who also served as co-counsel in a 2002 three-week custody trial.

“This couple had as many complications as you’ll ever see in a custody case, so I give a lot of credit to both sides for coming together and working toward a settlement,” she said.

The Kantaras v. Kantaras child custody bench trial ended in an unprecedented ruling in favor of Michael Kantaras, who underwent surgery in 1987 to remove his breasts and ovaries and began taking hormones before he met and married his ex-wife, Linda, in 1989.

“Michael has always, for a lifetime, had a self-identity as a male,” Pasco County Judge Gerard O’Brien wrote in an 809-page decision. “Chromosomes are only one factor in the determination of sex, and they do not overrule gender or self-identity, which is the true test or identifying mark of sex.”

In 2004, the Florida Supreme Court reversed the ruling, upholding Forsythe’s claim that the marriage was null and void because her ex-husband was still a woman and same-sex marriages are illegal in Florida.

The unanimous decision went further to establish the precedent that a marriage could not exist between two people of the same birth gender.

With the marriage dissolved and Michael Kantaras’ right to assert parental authority placed in limbo, the case was remanded to trial court.

More : edition.cnn.com

Mediation has become an important tool for local judges presiding over civil cases, with more than half of all lawsuits filed in the city resolved through mediation, officials from the Shanghai Higher People’s Court said yesterday at a news conference.

Local courts accepted 104,000 civil lawsuits and resolved 94,000 of them during the first eight months of this year. Among the completed lawsuits, 60.9 percent were resolved through mediation, which represents a 10 percentage point increase from the same period last year.

“Mediation is emphasized throughout the trial process for civil lawsuits. The judges will make judgments only after the two sides have failed to reach an agreement,” said Pan Furen, deputy director of the higher court.
“Mediation not only improves the working efficiency of judges, but also benefits the parties involved in the lawsuits since they needn’t spend a long time and much energy waiting for a verdict.

In some grassroots courts, a group is formed to do mediation specially. For instance, the Pudong New Area People’s Court formed the No. 4 civil court to handle mediation work. The court has resolved one third of the civil cases brought before the Pudong court, despite having only 12 percent of its employees.

Xu yudi, a judge with the Minhang District People’s Cour finished some 400 cases in the first half of this year through mediation. “Most such cases are common disputes like divorce, property division and debt payment,” he said.

More : english.eastday.com

It was love at first sight for 22-year-old Wang Xiulan when she met her would-be Mr Right Cheng Zhigang, then 21, at a gathering of first-year students at a university in this capital of Jiangsu Province four years ago.

They quickly fell in love and tied the knot in the ivory tower the following year, to the envy of their classmates. They were lucky indeed, because the new Marriage Registration Regulation that became effective that year for the first time allows college students to get married.

But this Thursday they came under the media spotlight as a local court in Nanjing the Xuanwu District People’s Court approved their divorce, reportedly the first of its kind in China. The broken marriage prompted a media debate over whether college students are psychologically and financially mature enough to marry.

“They both suffered a lot, and they didn’t want to become reconciled even after court mediation,” a judge surnamed Zhang told China Daily, adding that the court proceeding started in early May has greatly affected their study and job hunting.

Both regretted getting married so rashly, Zhang said.

“Most students are still too immature to deal with marital responsibilities even though they are grown-ups. They get married out of impulse, but the passion fades away with daily trivialities,” said Gao Jinyun, a middle-aged woman in Nanjing.

Lack of money was reportedly one of the reasons behind the constant spats between Wang and Cheng, who both came from poor families in the countryside.

An extramarital affair of Cheng, which was discovered by his wife on the spot, was the last straw.

Some people even suggested that lawmakers should reinstate the law to ban marriage for university students.

But others hold that the student status shouldn’t matter, and their divorce is just an ordinary case out of some 1.8 million in the country every year.

“An increasing number of divorces are reported in recent years, including many filed by newlyweds. The individual case o