Kate Hudson is no fool, nor does she have stardust in her eyes when she says that her divorce was "the best thing that happened to her."

The Fools Gold star and Black Crowes musician Chris Robinson divorced in 2007 but are devoted parents to their young son, Ryder.

Hudson told Cosmopolitan magazine that since separating, the two have found a rhythm that is quite harmonious and certainly not as out of tune as their relationship was when they lived together as man and wife.

“Look — Chris and I are still basically living together! We’ve figured it out. I mean, obviously, nothing’s perfect, but I could never look at our divorce as a mistake. If anything, it’s the best thing that ever happened to us," she said.

When a divorce is amicable, as many today strive it to be, the parents are in and out of each other's houses and some share the same domicle, but the parents leave while the child has the consistant home.

The secret, as she reveals, is to "figure it out." And with the help of places like firstwivesworld.com and more information on mediation and co-parenting courses, couples may break-up but simultaneously build a new family structure that can be quite strong.

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.

The Times of London ran an excerpt from Lesley Downer’s new book, The Last Concubine, which reports the blow by blow — pardon the expression — of several of these stings. Here’s one:

“3.30 pm. Mr. A is outside a bank in a busy part of Ikebukuro, a faintly seedy area of Tokyo, waiting for his date. He beams as she teeters across the road on high heels. Kyoko, 20, is half his age. She has a mane of black hair, sloe eyes, a fetching smile and a cute giggle. Her blouse is open to reveal her cleavage and she has on a short skirt and sheer black tights. Mr. A is a bald 40-year-old salesman in a crumpled gray suit and glasses.

“Mr. A doesn’t know that a team of private investigators is recording his every move. The boss, the ebullient Mr. Tomiya, lurks behind a lamppost on the other side of the road and takes photographs as Kyoko meets Mr. A. Tomiya’s equipment includes a packet of cigarettes and a pen, both of which are actually cameras. Shimizu, a heavy-set man with a bullet head and cropped hair, carries a black bag. It contains a camera with which he films continuously through a tiny hole in the bag. A third man acts as a lookout. …

“When presented with the evidence, the embarrassed husband not only agrees to the divorce but agrees to favorable terms for the wife.”

Along with qualities like “devoted,” “adventurous,” “successful,” and “cute,” the checklist of women deciding what they want in a man may now include “the fidelity gene.”

A study by a behavioral geneticist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockhom confirmed what we already knew — when it comes to monogamy, it’s not about us, it’s about them.

Some guys, well, can't help themselves. You can blame the genes when he can't keep it in his jeans.

The gene in question controls the number and location of vasopressin receptors in the brain. Vasopressin is a hormone secreted during sexual activity that increases the likelihood of pair bonding.

One allele, or alternate form of a gene, and there are fewer vasopressin receptors. Two alleles and there are way fewer vasopressin receptors.

As The Washington Post reported, the finding is striking because it not only links the gene variant — present in two out of five men — with the risk of marital discord and divorce, but also appears to predict whether women involved with these men say their partners are emotionally close and available, or distant and disagreeable.

The presence of the allele also seems predictive of whether men get married or live with women without getting married.

"Men with two copies of the allele had twice the risk of experiencing marital dysfunction, with a threat of divorce during the last year, compared to men carrying one or no copies," said Hasse Walum, a behavioral geneticist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, who led the study. "Women married to men with one or two copies of the allele scored lower on average on how satisfied they were with the relationship compared to women married to men with no copies."

Hilary Duff's father will be a stranger now. Although Hilary wrote the song "The Stranger," musing about how her mother, Susan, must feel after her dad had an affair with a stewardess, the song title is particularly accurate, since Robert Duff has been sentenced to jail for violating a divorce agreement.

Robert Duff got in trouble by selling $367,537 of stocks — marital assets — without court approval, since the divorce is not yet finalized.

Judges don't like that. Neither do ex-wives.

He will now spend 10 days in a Texas county jail.

At the time of the sentencing, Robert Duff was ordered to put the profits from the stock sale, some $368,000, into a court fund, and to pay his wife $12,500, half the cost of Hilary's upcoming 21st birthday party, on Sept. 28.

Although Hilary is technically celebrating adulthood, nothing robs a kid of her childhood more than battling parents who regress into immature behavior and put their kids in the middle of a psychodrama.

The pain of her parent's ultimate split is still raw.

Susan and Robert had been married for 22 years. In a rare interview, Hilary Duff said, "I was embarrassed that my family wasn't perfect and that some woman had broken it up … This is so hard to talk about."

Even moreso now.

Hilary's parents have been spending most of their time apart since the late 90's when Susan moved to L.A. to help Hilary and her sister, Haylie, launch their careers. Hilary hit gold playing "Lizzie Maguire" on the Disney Channel.

Robert remained home in Houston, where he operated a chain of convenience stores.

Absence, however, has a way of straining marriages. (This doesn't apply only to Hollywood actors away on location.)

Robert met his stewardess lover while Susan was nurturing their daughters’ careers.

If your sister was emotionally battered by a bitter divorce and custody battle and you became your ex-brother-in-law’s boss, what would you do? Would you want to fire the guy?

Most likely.

But politicians and elected leaders are supposed to control those impulses and not use their power irresponsibly. Again, stress the words supposed to…

That is the dilemma that is facing Gov. Sarah Palin, Alaska’s Annie Oakley and the new vice presidential pick of Republican presidential candidate John McCain.

Over in Alaska, a legislative panel has launched a $100,000 investigation to determine if Palin dismissed Alaska’s public safety commissioner Walter Monegan because he would not fire Mike Wooten, her ex-brother-in-law.

According to the AP, before Palin became Governor of Alaska, the Palin family accused Wooten of drinking a beer while in his patrol car, illegal hunting, and firing a Taser at his 11-year-old stepson. The Palins also claimed Wooten threatened to kill Sarah Palin's father.

Wooten was suspended over the taser incident and another allegation for five days in 2006. He has since been cleared on all other charges, and is still on the job.

Personally, if I thought someone threatened my father, abused by nephew and hurt my sister, I wouldn’t want the guy around either. And if his boss was working for me – i.e., public commissioner Walt Monegan — and didn’t see the merit in finding cause for firing, I perhaps wouldn’t think too highly of him either.

At the very least, Monegan, who was appointed by Palin, should have been more sympathetic. Or given Wooten rotten hours. If he does this to his family, he's likely going to be aggressive with others while working on his job as state trooper.

Football great Michael Strahan has been granted a Giant relief. A New Jersey state appeals court has ruled that he didn't have to pay $18,000 a month in child support of his 3-year-old twin daughters as part of his divorce settlement with his ex-wife, Jean.

But Jean isn't going to be shopping at the Dollar Store any time soon. In their bitter divorce, where nasty accusations flew like fumbling footballs, she caught a $15.3 million settlement, slightly more than what was specified in their prenuptial agreement. Strahan paid around half of that, and they recently settled a dispute over the remaining $6.5 million.

The court sent the child support case back to a lower court in Essex County and ordered it to recalculate the amount. Judge Lorraine Parker, one of the three judges involved in the decision, wrote, “Both parents have a shared obligation to support their children.”

In the decision, Judge Parker said that “as a healthy, educated, 41-year-old, [Jean Strahan] is capable of earning her own income.”

Perhaps Jean Strahan overstepped when she made certain claims for her daughters’ expenses, including $30,000 a year for landscaping, designer handbags, and $22,000 for baby pictures.

The three-judge panel also ruled that Strahan doesn’t need to pay for his wife’s lawyers, nor does he need to get a multi-million dollar disability policy.

Strahan announced yesterday that he has not accepted a request from the Giants to return to the team. Vacationing in Greece, he said he preferred to stay retired. It would have been his 16th season of professional football.

His salary would have been $8 million a year.

Instead he will receive a $2 million salary working for Fox Sports pregame Sunday show covering the National Football League.

Losing a job often means a spouse can’t afford to pay a divorce settlement. When Steven became Susan Stanton at age 48 after a sex-change operation, the Largo Florida City Commission fired Steven/Susan from his/her job as city manager — a job that paid $157,000.

The grounds: after 20 years on the job, and just when he decided to become a woman, they lost trust in him/her, and felt he/she was no longer leadership material.

That left Donna Stanton, the wife of the new Susan Stanton, in a quandary when they tried to figure out equitable distribution.

According to a story in “The Tampa Tribune” by reporter Stephen Thompson, and court documents, Steven/Susan Stanton amicably mediated his divorce from his wife of 18 years. The wife, Donna, would get $4,756 in alimony and an additional $799 a month in child support for their 15 year old son. Their marriage lasted 17 years.

Because Steven/Susan no longer has a job, he/she offered Donna Stanton a lump sum of $50,000 from his/her retirement account to cover the roughly first ten months of alimony.

That would make him current through December.

But — and here's the kicker — according to the settlement, if Steven/Susan doesn't get a job by then, even though he/now/she has applied for 100 city manager jobs, Donna Stanton is entitled to more from the retirement account.

One good thing: sex change and broken marriages make for great movies, or at least they did in 2003, when Tom Wilkinson starred with Jessica Lange in the highly-regarded television drama “Normal,” about a man who wants to become a woman after 25 years of marriage and two children.

Most American 8-year-old girls are thinking about The Suite Life with Zack and Cody and not a married life with a man in his fifties. But in Saudi Arabia, girls just can't have fun, and how they're treated is no laughing matter.

According to the BBC, an 8-year-old girl is pleading to a Saudi Arabian court for a divorce. She was married off to the man without her knowledge — by her father. (How do you say jerk in Farsi?)

Child-protection organizations say Saudi children are sometimes given away in return for large dowries, or as a result of beliefs that marriage to cousins or other known persons will protect young boys or girls from illicit relationships.

What should be illicit is selling a daughter before she becomes of age to make her own choices and treating her like property instead of a prized individual.

Now, following the publicity, the child's mother is reportedly asking for an annulment. Although women have limited power in Saudi Arabia, annulments have a precedent with underage children.

Last April, a court in neighboring Yemen annulled the arranged marriage of a 9-year-old girl to a 28-year-old man.

Perhaps the court of public opinion will help make a ruling in Saudi Arabia as well that young brides have an age requirement.

How many marriages are too many? Tom Arnold just finalized divorce No. 3. Mickey Rooney has had eight wives, and ten children. But Mohammed Bello Abubakar of Nigeria has 86 wives, and at least 170 children.

Now a court in Nigeria has told him he must divorce 82 of his wives, most of whom he married when they were 25 or younger, or be sentenced to death. That would leave Abubakar, 84, with only four legal wives, the customary limit under Muslim law.

Some wives and children live in a compound in the Nigerian village of Bida, and others live in Lagos.

The BBC now reports that Abubakar, a former teacher and self-proclaimed healer, has upset Islamic authorities in northwest Nigeria, where Muslims are in the majority and strict Sharia law was reinstituted in 2000.

Sharia says that a man is allowed to have four wives as long as he can treat them equally.

But Abubakar is challenging Muslim scholars, saying there is no punishment in the Koran for having more than four wives. By his interpretation, “the Koran does not place a limit and it is up to what your own power, your own endowment and ability allows.”

He credits Allah with giving him the authority to “control” 86 wives. Speaking directly to Allah has not endeared him to the courts in Nigeria either.

But no one has so far proved that any of his wives is unhappy. The women have created a female-centric family, and consider Abubakar their guru.

One of them, Ganiat Mohammed Bello, has been married to Abulbaker for 20 years. “I am now the happiest woman on earth,” she told the BBC this month.

“When you marry a man with 86 wives you know he knows how to look after them.”

Although Sharia law has sentenced several people to death in Nigeria for adultery, so far not one death sentence has been carried out.

Besides, Abubaker says, he doesn’t recommend this for everyone.

If your new man was going to be working with the home wrecker who took away your husband, what would do? That dilemma may now be facing the lovely Reese Witherspoon, who, post-divorce from Ryan Phillippe, is seeing Jake Gyllenhaal.

In Touch Weekly says that Abbie Cornish — the actress whose affair with Ryan Philippe caused the end of his marriage to Reese — may be cast as Jake Gyllenhaal's love interest in an upcoming film.

Of course the natural instinct would be to say to Jake, "No way do I want you to act in that movie with her." But getting roles in Hollywood is not as easy as finding the latest Fendi bag, and directors make casting choices, unless the actor is a major A-lister. Witherspoon is in that league; Gyllenhaal is not.

And in that line of work, many relationships are created by on-set romances. Angelina Jolie met two husbands and her current amour — Johnny Lee Miller, Billy Bob Thornton, and now Brad Pitt — while working on films.

Robert Rodriguez left his wife after meeting Rose McGowan; Russell Crowe had an affair with Meg Ryan, causing her to break-up with Dennis Quaid; and Reese met Gyllenhaal while doing the movie Rendition.

That, of course, is one of the perils of that business. Few other places have you kissing strangers passionately as part of the job requirement, or going off to an exotic location for months, away from family and spouse.

But many people meet their future spouses at work. In an Elle/MSNBC poll, two-thirds of the 31,000 people polled reportedly flirt at the office.

But take heart, that your heart may not be permanently broken. Flirting is flirting.

Only 55 percent of office relationships turn into marriage, according to the Society of Human Resources Management.