Career and Pursuits - Experts and Resources

2008: The Year in Divorce

Posted to by First Wives World on Thu, 12/25/2008 - 12:34am

The splits. The fits. The emotional pits. And all the couples who called it quits.

This past year had it all. Some stories touched us, others moved us, many angered us, and a few even tickled us.

After much culling and sifting, we narrowed it down to 20 of our top picks from 2008. We hope you enjoy this little look back as we prepare to move forward.

The Let’s-Just-Be-Friends Award
(Most Amicable Divorce)
 Robin Williams and Marsha Garces Williams

Talk about civil unions. No sooner had the couple announced their split after 19 years of marriage than they signed an official agreement stating "we commit ourselves to the collaborative divorce process and agree to seek a positive way to resolve our differences justly and equitably” — all for the sake of their two children. For those of you playing along at home, this is the way to go.

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Sarah Palin and the He-Dude

Posted to by Jill Brooke on Mon, 10/06/2008 - 6:32pm

With the confidence of a captain of the girls' basketball team, Sarah Palin swished her way into the office of Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, took a jump shot at being Governor of Alaska, and then slam dunked the nomination for the Republican vice presidency.

Along the way, she’s accomplished a feat that often sidelines powerful women. Throughout her impressive career, she has never made her husband look diminished.

How she has dribbled her way around this challenging issue is a subject truly worthy of debate. After all, studies in Social Forces and The Journal of Marriage and Family say that women who are more successful than their husbands have higher divorce rates.

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Divorce Fallout Shadows Palin’s Campaign

Posted to by Jill Brooke on Fri, 10/03/2008 - 7:50pm

Gov. Sarah Palin may be not be getting a wink of sleep now that an Alaska state judge allowed a probe to go forward into whether she abused her power. The Republican vice presidential nominee is under fire for pressuring Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan to fire her ex brother-in-law, a state trooper.

The charges are that pressure to fire the trooper came from the Governor herself, her husband, Todd, and her staff. After Monegan did not agree, she fired him, citing disagreement over budget cuts.

And to her, that's a heck of a good reason and why should it be questioned otherwise?

On Thursday Judge Peter Michalski threw out the lawsuit filed by five Republican state legislators who claimed that Palin was the victim of an unfair partisan probe. The Republicans appear to be worried that a damaging report may surface before Election Day and affect voters. Or at least the kind of voters who vote based on performance.

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Career to Blame for Pink's Divorce

Posted to by Jill Brooke on Fri, 09/26/2008 - 8:32am

Pop sensation Pink isn’t blue that she’s through with her ex-husband, the motocross biker Carey Hart. But she does blame her career. She’s not alone in feeling work drove her marriage straight into the dirt.

In an interview, Pink says, “It ‘s such a cliché when you talk about a Hollywood divorce, but the scheduling did get very hard. And it seemed that I was always the one left in charge of it. I got tired of being the Schedule Woman.”

Indeed, it can be exhausting having to juggle so much. Which is why one West Virginia University study shows that working women have a higher divorce rate and cites as a major irritant the disparity between the housework they do, and the housework their mate does.

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Japanese Wives Resort to "Honeytraps" for Divorce

professional seductresses provide legal grounds

Posted to by Jill Brooke on Fri, 09/05/2008 - 10:20am

Japanese husbands may want to cry “entrapment” over the practices of a company that hires professional seducers to help unhappy wives get rid of their husbands.

In most U.S. states, you can just say sayonara to husbands who are belligerent, boorish or belching bores. But In Japan, where women’s rights are not highly valued, wives now see the value in fetching divorces by using fetching women to lure their husbands, thus giving them the necessary grounds for divorce.

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A New Life Is Born

Posted to by Jennifer Bailey on Fri, 01/18/2008 - 1:00pm

You have to love stories like this.

Jennifer Heath is an American citizen living in Fiji. She married a local man but after 12 years of marriage he decided to divorce her and move back to the US. This left her on her own with children to support.

Then, in 2004, she and her ex decided that since neither one was seeing anybody they would meet in California for Christmas. After the celebrations, instead of flying back to Fiji, Ms. Heath decided to fly to London and Asia to shop for pearls, which she had always loved.

A jewellery business was born.

She started by selling at her local market, but now works from her home in Lami, with nine other employees working for her. In 18 months, her business has taken her around the world six times. While her customers are mostly commercial, many individuals buy from her, especially for weddings.

The best part? While at the market, she met Richard Heath, originally from Napier, New Zealand. They are now married, and Mr. Heath has quit his job with the Hawkes Bay Chamber of Commerce to work for his wife.

From the death of a marriage comes a truly new life.

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Co-Parenting A Business With Your Ex

Posted to by Amanda Lockhart on Sat, 01/12/2008 - 4:00pm

Divorce is hard enough when it's just between two people. It's even more complicated when there are children involved. But what happens if you and your soon-to-be ex own a business together?

I saw that question posed in a tax advice column the other day, and the answer provided something valuable, beyond the simple X's and O's of how the assets are shared.

Sure, there was the standard discussion of the tax implications — the issues to consider if you or your ex wants to sell off your share of the business, or if both of you want to sell. But then there's the other possibility: Nobody sells anything and the two of you continue to operate the business together. And that's the part of this that I found most interesting.

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