A custody agreement was reached yesterday allowing Britney Spears to have gradually increased visitation rights with her two sons, while her ex-husband, Kevin Federline, will retain physical custody.

We love hearing when a husband comes to his senses and returns to the loving embrace of his wife and family. Rolling Stone Ronnie Wood was in the news lately for his fling with Ekaterina Ivanova, a 19-year old Russian cocktail waitress.

He had left his wife, Jo, in Britain and jetted off to his home in Ireland with Ivanova.

Friends said he was in the midst of a serious crisis, and his drinking had escalated to consuming two bottles of vodka a day.

Wood has been candid over the years about his struggle with alcoholism, and entered rehab in at least six times before, most recently in 2006.

He had been sober for some time, but relapsed after the end of the last Rolling Stones tour. He met Ivanova in April in an escort bar, and she immediately became a drinking buddy and nude model for him. (Wood is a serious painter.)

One thing is for sure: Ivanova wasn't telling him to reduce his vodka consumption.

Wood's publicist said on July 10: "She is a drinking partner. When you're an alcoholic and your family are all telling you to stop drinking, you simply find someone else to drink with. You can see how it happens, you end up pushing away the ones you love because you don't think straight."

What got him back to his senses? Seems like his oldest son, Jesse, 30, was able to remind him of what he would lose if he left the family nest.

Page Six reported that Jesse "flew to his side and convinced him to return home and get help."

According to the BCC, Wood entered rehab yesterday.

Wood, 61, married Jo, 53, in 1985, and have two children, Leah, 29, who got married earlier this month (Wood is pictured with Jo at the wedding), and Tyrone, 24.

Here’s a new way for the ex-basketball player Jason Caffey to keep score: ten children by seven “baby mamas” and one wife. He filed for bankruptcy last August. That didn’t stop a judge in Atlanta, Georgia, from handing down a ruling on Wednesday that Caffey, because he didn’t show up in court, owed one of them, Lorunda Brown, $17,088.87 in legal fees.

The judge dismissed Caffey’s motion “with prejudice.” That ain’t good.

It was a response to Caffey’s failure to turn up in court on his own motion to modify child support to Brown.

Caffey was a professional basketball player in the NBA until 2002. When he filed for bankruptcy last fall, his papers stated he owed $1.9 million, mostly in long overdue child support.

He said he made $11,500 a month from – get this – a string of daycare centers and a sportsbar in Alabama.

He also listed assets of two NBA championship rings (worth $10,000) and a 2006 Dodge Charger (worth $34,000).

His problem, his lawyers said, was that his expenses are $15,000 a month. Thus, he is bankrupt.

His wife, mother of two of his children, filed for divorce last year.

Coincidence?

Bankruptcy does not cancel child support obligations, but it does put a hold on collections until the person filing for bankruptcy sets up a payment plan.

That tripped up another Caffey baby mama, Karen Russell, in April. Russell is baby mama No. 1, having given birth to a son 15 years ago. (She and Caffey met at the University of Alabama.)

Caffey began missing child support payments in, ahem, 1995, she says.

He did, however, make regular payments, when the child support was deducted from his NBA salary, which ran as high as $5 million a season.

(And wouldn’t we like to see those pay stubbs? That must have been a way for him to remember all of the baby mamas’ names.)

In filing for divorce last week, Cynthia Rodriguez, wife of Yankee Alex Rodriguez, seems to be expecting more than just the house, their two daughters, and the four dogs. Since they married in 2002 her husband signed a contract for $275 million in 2007; he is rumored to be worth somewhere around $400 million. And despite their prenuptial agreement, she hopes to get some.

Florida does not consider fault in granting a divorce, but it does consider fault in alloting child custody and support.

And just to be prepared that no accusations of fault are thrown at her, Cynthia Rodriguez has asked to see any dirt her husband has on her, which is to say, any reports from wiretapping, videotaping or private detectives. At least she’s asking to see those materials in a long list submitted to the court last week.

Any woman facing divorce from a wealthy man, even if she has a prenuptial agreement, might make note of these requests.

Cynthia Rodriguez's lawyers asked for:

A “long form” financial statement

Pay stubs, check stubs and registers

Bank statements and broker statements

Stock, bond, and mutual fund certificates

Stock options

Deferred compensation agreements

Wills, powers of attorney, and life insurance policies

A list of outstanding debts

Cash receipts

All deeds and tax bills

Homestead exemption receipts and mortgages

Sale agreements on any property

List of personal property

Firearms registrations

Invoices and appraisals for all motor vehicles

Any records of corporate interests

Partnership and joint venture agreements

Contracts for any consulting jobs, projects, speeches, etc.

Records of all fringe benefits

Business records of partnerships

Lists of all charge accounts

All memberships cards or documents

Gifts of any kind received during the course of the marriage

Medical bills

After losing joint custody of his kids, losing any thread of dignity, losing potential clients (since women are the ones who often make decisions on hiring architects), Peter Cook had a revelation.

He told Fox News last night that, if he had to do it all over again, when he met future paramour Diana Bianchi, he'd say, "No, I'm a married man. Move on."

There is one problem with this revelation. It was he who was pursuing Bianchi, an 18-year-old girl. It wasn't as though she was pursuing him.

He was an adult married man who should have known better, just like Bill Clinton should have known better when he tangoed with Monica Lewinsky.

That's why we can't blame a Monica Lewinsky or a Diana Bianchi as much as we should blame their married lovers.

Yes, it takes two to do the horizontal mambo, and even young girls should have the moral backbone to dance away from this entanglement.

But in both cases, it was the mature adult who was in the power position and had the influence to sway what happened.

In life, there are consequences for whatever you do, as well as the opportunity to learn from them.

Mothers out there should remind their lovely, nubile daughters that these trysts with married men — despite the intoxicating halo of power around them — often have horrible outcomes.

Affairs destroy families and reputations. Rarely does the young woman get a long-term relationship with the husband, or even a soon-to-be-divorced man.

In fact, a Kinnsey Institute study of 2,000 people found that only 17 percent of males who had affairs were planning on leaving their spouses. And only 9 percent of the men planned to marry their current lovers.

Note that Peter Cook's current girlfriend is Suzanne Shaw, a 36-year-old single mother, not the now-21-year-old Diana Bianchi.

Another lesson is that most wives are not like Bambi in the headlights, in total shock and surprise over the affair.

A divorce attorney in Maryland says that husbands often come to him dumbfounded. Their wives have asked for a divorce, saying they are “emotionally unavailable,” and they say they don’t know what that means.

The attorney, James J. Gross, says that he is equally puzzled.

He knows that Spock on Star Trek doesn’t have any emotions, but he’s an alien.

Gross says he doesn’t understand what it means to have emotions, but not make them available.

And so he presents the question to a group of men at the gym where he plays racquet ball.

And this is the answer.

We wonder… Is his friend onto something?

If you heard that every morning, would you stay?

A jury in Tampa, FL has convicted Dr. Richard Carino on three counts of receiving child pornography and three counts of possessing child pornography. The Jury listened closely to the testimony of government’s star witness: the doctor’s ex-wife.

Carino, 48, who practiced family medicine in Port Richey, FL, with a specialty in pain management, married a widow with two young children in March 2004. Autumn Carino, 47, worked in her husband’s medical office.

She therefore must have been aware of a DEA investigation of excessive prescriptions for controlled drugs coming out of his office. In fact, the DEA said that one day in March of 2004, her husband wrote 82 prescriptions for phentermine and other easily abused drugs.
Some days he wrote hundreds of prescriptions, the DEA charged.

Eventually, his registration to dispense controlled substances was indefinitely suspended by the state and revoked by the federal government.

But his problems were about to get worse, and therefore so were his wife's. 

Can a guy cheat on his wife and be involved in Internet porn and still be a good father? This question is being debated not only in the divorce trial between Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook but in kitchens and cafes and around water coolers across the country.

Some of my guy friends have argued that they know plenty of men who are great fathers but have cheated on their wives. And a few have also said that they have watched porn – though not $3,000-worth a month – as though the amount dissolves any sleaziness.

And do you know what I say to them? “How do you define a great father? Sure, a guy can be loving, generous, play baseball or Barbie doll games with their kids and even dote on them and do homework. But they are also the moral template of their children's behavior. If a kid sees that a parent can betray the family, what makes you think that deep down the child will not have trust issues with either men or relationships?”

This usually shuts them up.

Children of divorce are forced early on to compartmentalize their emotions. To manage the trauma of divorce, especially when it was a result of an affair, they have to attach themselves to what they like about the parent and accept that there will be qualities they do not. It is a painful juggling act.

Although Christie Brinkley is fighting for full custody of Sailor, the 10-year-old daughter she had with Peter Cook, and Jack Paris, her 13-year-old son whom Cook adopted, it is highly unlikely that Cook will not have some access to his children.

Many women I have counseled as a stepfamily coach have questioned how their kids could want to see their father after he caused the family so much agony. “Shouldn't he be punished?” they cry. “He shouldn't be allowed to be with our children.”

Naturally Cook's lawyer, Norman Sheresky, is arguing that Brinkley's court case is motivated by revenge and not by the best interest of the children.

The divorce was a cautionary tale, a textbook case of what not to do. Christie Brinkley and Peter Cook may have settled their contentious case today, but the damage is already done.

The emotional costs far exceed the $2.1 million dollars that Brinkley will pay to Cook for the right to have sole custody of her children, Sailor, 10, and Jack, 13. When you have a $30 million house, it's not as though you can't afford to cough up some cash to prevent a collision crash.

In leaving the courtroom, Cook said, “I got everything I’ve been wanting for two years.”

Christie let her anger hijack her reason. She always had the trump card: she exposed her cad of a husband in the courtroom in a bid to get full custody.

But she could have done it in private, by keeping the courtroom closed to the tabloid Klieg lights and the prying eyes of reporters willing to snatch every unsavory morsel.

Even the public got disgusted by this self-absorbed display of parental looniness.

Christie forgot the golden rule of FirstWivesWorld.com. “You have to love your children more than you hate your spouse.”

For whatever reason, she made a choice to marry this man, and have a daughter with this man, and have him adopt her son from another marriage. Once you have kids with someone, you are connected to that person for life.

She should have made peace with the fact that she couldn't remove Cook permanently from her life – as she did with her previous husband, which her lawyers must have told her was very unusual.

This spectacle could have been avoided.

In the settlement announced today, Cook gets the extra cash but Brinkley gets full custody of the kids and keeps her Hampton properties. Cook will also be able to see his children.

It is no secret that contentious divorces have a negative impact on children ranging from low self-esteem, sleep problems, weight gain and depression to impaired performance at school.