Articles Posted in Divorce / Dissolution of Marriage

In a first for the state of Maryland – but what may be an indication of things to come in family court – a judge has awarded joint custody of a dog to its owners in a divorce case.

Craig and Gayle Myers will now spend six months each with Lucky, a Shih Tzu mix they adopted during their eight-year marriage. The couple has no children, but considers Lucky to be the closest thing to it; apparently they found a judge — retired Maryland Circuit Judge Graydon S. McKee II — who agrees.

In a CNN story about the case, Judge McKee said that even though dogs are considered property in Maryland, like every other state in the U.S., “I really don’t think a dog is like a couch.”

A new study by researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Waisman Center has found that parents of grown children with autism have a higher rate of divorce.

Published in the August issue of the Journal of Family Psychology, the study is the first of its kind to track the marital history of parents who have adult children with autism. Its findings contradict earlier assumptions that parents of autistic children face a bigger risk of divorce during the child’s younger years.

Researchers studied 391 couples that are parents of adolescent and adult children with autism, comparing their rate of divorce with a sample drawn from another large study, the National Survey of Midlife in the United States. They found that the divorce rate for both sets of parents were relatively the same until the child reaches the age of eight; at that time, the incidence of divorce for couples with autistic children remains high while it goes down for parents of children without disabilities.

Journalist and author Anneli Rufus recently blogged about 15 Ways to Predict Divorce at thedailybeast.com after crunching numbers from a variety of studies on divorce. Here are some of her findings:

Just by being an American, you have a 40-50 percent chance of divorcing.

If you live in a “red state”, you are 27 percent more likely to divorce. This is because red-staters get married at a younger age.

If you and your spouse are contemplating a Florida divorce, there are some basic rules you need to know before you proceed:

Residency requirement. At least one of you must be a Florida resident for at least six months prior to filing for divorce.

Grounds. Florida is a “no fault” divorce state where most divorces are based on the grounds of “irreconcilable differences”. However, “fault” may be considered when it comes to awarding alimony or property division.

A recent feature story at CNN.com chronicled the growing trend among engaged couples in their 20s and 30s to participate in premarital counseling that they hope will make it less likely that they are victims of divorce like their parents.

States have gotten into the act, too. Six states – including Florida – have passed legislation in recent years encouraging couples to attend premarital counseling by offering reduced rates on marriage license fees for those that do.

Dr. Alan Hawkins, a family life professor at Brigham Young University, was quoted in the story as saying that marriage prep education appears to be increasing nationwide. He says that no-fault divorce laws, changing gender roles and female economic independence have created a greater need for couples to work on their relationship skills in order for modern marriages to succeed.

A new North Carolina insurance company – SafeGuard Guaranty Corp. — has introduced what it is calling the world’s first divorce insurance product at wedlockdivorceinsurance.com.

Profiled in a recent New York Times blog, Safeguard says its divorce insurance is a form of casualty insurance that will cover the costs of divorce, including legal fees. The divorce insurance is sold in “units” of insurance protection, with each unit equaling $1,250 in initial coverage and costing $16 per month per unit.

To keep couples that are on the verge of divorce from buying divorce insurance to cover their expenses, the policy does not kick in for 48 months following the effective date. However, the company offers an “Accelerated Maturity Rider” that decreases the waiting period from 48 to 36 months. If you get a divorce before the maturity period ends, the premiums you have paid for the policy will be returned to you, minus any taxes paid by the insurer.

A recent article in the Washington Post on interfaith marriages said that the rate of interfaith marriages is climbing, but so too is the divorce rate for those marriages.

In 2006, 25 percent of U.S. households were mixed faith, according to the General Social Survey. But calculations based on another survey – the American Religious Identification Survey of 2001 – showed that people in mixed-religion marriages were three times more likely to be separated or divorced than couples that share the same religious faith.

Many experts believe that as society becomes more tolerant and institutional ties become less important, interfaith marriages flourish. However, once couples are married and children come along, questions about how to raise them loom larger and seem more important than when they were first married. Couples who were more tolerant of differences prior to marriage become less so after being married for awhile.

A 1993 paper published by University of Illinois at Chicago economics professor Evelyn Lehrer found that if members of a mainline Christian religion marry, they have a 20 percent chance of being divorced after five years. If a Christian and a Jew marry, their chances of being divorced within five years are more than double that – over 40 percent.

Lehrer said this is because religion is much more than going to church on Sunday (or temple on Saturday) – it informs many of the activities that couples do together as well as their ideas about money, friends and professional networks, and the differences between spouses begin to add up.

Unfortunately, what they often add up to is divorce.

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The Jacksonville Network for Strengthening Families, a city-run program that offered classes to families on preventing violence, marriage preparation and divorce prevention and that was eliminated last year when its federal grant money ran out, has been resurrected by FreshMinistries, a Jacksonville interfaith nonprofit group.

According to a story in the Florida Times-Union, independent research on the Jacksonville program showed it worked. FreshMinistries said it would continue to support the family outreach program until it can operate successfully on its own.

The Jacksonville Network for Strengthening Families started in 2005, and had served 5,000 Jacksonville area residents by 2009. Independent studies done on the program showed that it had improved family functioning and reduced recidivism for first-time juvenile offenders.

Ikos, one of Europe’s oldest hedge funds, is at the center of a nasty divorce battle between its husband-and-wife founders, who started the company with $10,000 in 1992 and built it into a $3.4 billion financial powerhouse.

Martin Coward and Elena Ambrosiadou recently split over his affair with a 23-year-old Brazilian woman. Coward, who holds a Ph.D in math, developed Ikos’ quant trading operation, where computers – not humans — choose trades. Greek native Ambrosiadou, formerly Britain’s highest paid female at $18 million annually, met Coward at Cambridge where she was a chemical engineering student. She went from there to BP, where she was the oil giant’s youngest international executive at age 27.

The high-stakes divorce turned particularly nasty when Ambrosiadou fired Coward’s team of researchers at Ikos, causing many investors to pull their funds in alarm and reducing Ikos’ fund to $1.35 billion. She also had police seize her husband’s jet while he was on vacation at a Greek island resort; he has since ordered his own $2 million jet and she has ordered her own nine-passenger private plane as well as a $120 million private yacht that she plans to use a few weeks a year.

Coward has left Ikos to start his own firm, leaving Ambrosiadou in control. She has attracted new investors to the fund, which now stands at $1.95 billion, according to her attorneys.

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With one of the highest foreclosure and mortgage delinquency rates in the nation, Florida homes have suffered devastating losses in equity over the past three years. So it’s no surprise that many Florida couples in the midst of a divorce no longer argue about who gets to keep the house – rather, the argument becomes about who has to keep the house.

Many divorcing Florida homeowners now face the possibility of being tied together not because of the children but because of the negative equity in their homes. This is because, from a lender’s perspective, both spouses are still responsible for the loan, married or not. If one spouse can qualify for a mortgage modification or refinance on their own, problem solved. However, in today’s current economic climate, this is a very big “if”.

Keep in mind, if your spouse cannot qualify for a refinance or mortgage modification without you still on the mortgage and note, do not think a quitclaim deed will absolve you of any responsibility. It will not.