The Australian posted a recent article on the impact of divorce on the environment. The claim? That the results of divorce — multiple homes, cars, energy use — is eating way at the earth's resources. One can't argue with that, especially as a new report by the Australia's Department of Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts released the following numbers:

"A four-person family that breaks up will generate around 43 percent more garbage than they did when they were together. They will use up to 34 percent more water and up to 70 percent more energy, depending on the type of new dwellings being occupied."

But what we can argue with is the alternative: Stay in a broken relationship? And keep the kids there, too, just to cut down on the garbage and utilities? Please. A rise in energy consumption seems far less detrimental than forcing kids to stay in a glued-together, patched-up broken home. With the electricity they save now, they'll be running up their therapist's bill with all the hours they'll spend sitting on the couch in 10 years.

And let's remember, with second marriages come a union of two houses to one. Live Science reports that the environmental footprint of U.S. households who had "weathered divorce and remarriage shrank back to that of married households."

If researchers are looking to pin the environmental crisis on something, divorce is really the least of our worries.

Meet Louise Rush and Alan Bamberger, of San Francisco. They were divorced six years ago, but they still live in the same 2,700-square-foot Victorian house. She takes a downstairs bedroom, he takes an upstairs one, where he is close to their two sons. Lisa Belkin wrote an 8,000 word article “When Mom and Dad Share It All” in The New York Times Sunday magazine on June 14. But she didn’t have room for the Bambergers or another divorced couple that has split responsibilities amicably, even after divorce. You can read about them here on her blog about equally shared divorce.

Women's rights activists are up in arms about a contentious divorce case in Tennessee that may result in the local marital property laws to be changed. According to an article in Tennessean.com, "a wage-earning husband gets to keep $1.7 million in stock. His homemaker wife gets nothing."

Okay, I admit, when we're talking about the rights of the stay-at-home spouse — and let's face it, while many husbands including my own are starting to stay home, it's generally the wife — and there are a few million dollars in play, I can see why people are getting concerned. Some are suggesting that if this settlement goes through as is, it could be precedent setting and go against state laws.

But, and there's a really big but, I don't think that this case has anything to do with the wife being a homemaker. The court says that the husband is being allowed to keep the stock and not share it because all he did was hold it after receiving it as a gift from his father. Her employment status is irrelevant.

In my opinion — and I know this is going to make me the bad guy — when you decide not to work, you take a risk. A gift given to one individual is just that — a gift with only one intended recipient. If Daddy had given him a cheese knife, is she entitled to half of that, too?

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Extra! Extra! Want a better chance at a lasting marriage? Become an Evangelical. According to a new study by The Barna Group, evangelicals are less likely than the overall population to divorce, although one out of every four evangelicals who are or have been married nevertheless have gone through at least one divorce. Compared to about one out of two for the general U.S. population.

The survey was based on a sample of 5,017 adults conducted over a year, from January 2007 through January 2008. Of this sample, 3,792 adults were or had been married.

Christian researcher George Barna said Americans have grown accustomed to divorce and added,"There no longer seems to be much of a stigma attached to divorce; it is now seen as an unavoidable rite of passage." And indeed it does.

Barna goes on to suggest that one reason for the shockingly high divorce rate in America is co-habitation. He says that although government statistics have shown that co-habitation increases the likelihood of divorce, it is still growing in popularity.

Why? Barna suggests that America has become an "experimental, experience-driven culture" and rather than learning from the objective and teaching based information, people prefer to follow their instincts and let the chips fall where they may. Personally, I couldn't agree more.

So, what do you have to do to be considered an evangelical by Barna researchers? Click here to read about that, and more.

Who would've thought that doing laundry, washing dishes, picking up dirty clothes and vacuuming could be the answer to a woman's marital problems? But wait, it gets even better: For a happy marriage, the person doing the housework should be the man.

The Council on Contemporary Families' released a recent summary report of some studies, and the suggestion that housework lowers divorce rates is right there in black and white.

It's about sex. The deal is that we trade off some nookiage in the bedroom with our husbands in exchange for a little housework. Apparently, it works.

Joshua Coleman, a San Francisco-area psychologist and author of The Lazy Husband: How to Get Men to Do More Parenting and Housework, suggests this: "Equitable sharing of housework can lead to a happier marriage and more frequent sex."

Really? Is that so?

Ah, but Joshua's sneaky... "If a guy does housework, it looks to the woman like he really cares about her - he's not treating her like a servant." Sounds like some psychological strategy to get a little booty. But come on, girls. We always knew that "I love you" really meant, "Are you naked yet?"

The bigger question is, though: Does it work? Can you really trade off sex for housework and have a better marriage?

Yup, sounds like it. Coleman reports, "If a woman feels stressed out because the house is a mess and the guy's sitting on the couch while she's vacuuming, that's not going to put her in the mood." Um, no kidding, Coleman.

But I'll tell you something. If I had a husband, and he cleaned my house until it sparkled while I lazed on the sofa watching Brad Pitt movies, I wouldn't mind a little playtime between the sheets.

The rate of divorce among those in the armed forces held steady last year at 3.3 percent, which is leaving some wondering whether the figure — which was reported by the Pentagon — is an accurate one.

Consider for a moment the amount of stress that having a spouse in the military, on active duty, can put on a marriage, especially if there are children involved, and I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if at least half of them divorced. So, why aren't they?

One Army spokesman, Paul Boyce, credits the military's "strong programs ... and a sense of real teamwork among the families," for the fairly low divorce rate.

For example, the Marines have offered workshops to teach couples to manage conflict, solve problems, and communicate better, and the Navy started a similar program.

The Army has started paying for what it calls its "Family Covenant," a broad initiative of services and facilities to improve the quality of life for military families nationwide and overseas. It includes improving health care, schools, housing, and child care to relieve stress on spouses.

Army chaplains have trained some 60,000 active duty and reservists in the "Strong Bonds" program for strengthening personal relationships. Troops also get mental-health training in a program called "Battlemind" that teaches about common problems to expect at home as troops readjust to domestic life.

Still, the numbers tracked do not speak of marriages that are in trouble or falling apart, just those that have ended. In 2006 troops were given a mental health survey, 20 percent of those questioned said that they or their spouse were planning a divorce, compared with 15 percent in 2005.

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After a divorce, how would you like it if you had to pay half of the mortgage on the marital home into which your ex has moved his unemployed new girlfriend? It rankles one divorcée each time she delivers her children for visitation with their father.

I wouldn't like it — it's unfair and unacceptable. This is among the horror stories which have resulted from the inability to sell the marital home due to the decline in value. Nationwide, there has been an almost 27 percent fall in housing sales in 2007. Certain markets have been harder hit and in 2008, prices haven't been reduced significantly in those area which enjoyed sharp increases in value.

Unable to sell at a fair price, divorcing couples are forced to stay attached. One woman took her home off the market after a $40,000 reduction produced no sale. She will get a second job to make ends meet.

Often husbands cannot afford separate living quarters if they are contributing to the marital home expenses. In another case, a divorcing husband and wife must continue to live together because they cannot move before the sale of their home. In divorce settlement agreements calling for a 50/50 split of the equity in the property, split couples gulp as they watch the equity shrink.

Without the sale of the home, divorcing couples cannot move on. Economists do not promise an upturn in the price of real estate. It is a market favoring buyers, and buyers are unwilling top pay asking prices. But if sellers paid top dollar when they bought the property, they can't take significant losses, especially going through a divorce.

The Federal Reserve has been lowering interest rates, and it may be necessary for the spouse remaining in the property to refinance at great costs. The immediate future is bleak but we hope in the near term there will be a correction in housing prices, compatible with the economy and consumer confidence.

There was big news in the divorce blogging world a few weeks ago when a study was released saying that divorce was bad for the environment. When a couple splits up, there becomes a need for two apartments or houses, two beds, two cars, even two toasters. We salute the people who are able to divorce but voluntarily stay together. But imagine being forced to stay together even after the split.

This is the situation currently going on in Cuba. The tiny island is facing a severe housing shortage, estimated to be about 500,000 homes short of demand. People who divorce in Cuba — and there are a lot of them, with a divorce rate of 64 percent — are often forced to live together for years, or sometimes even their entire lives, simply because there is nowhere for them to go.

Mirta, a 45-year-old Cuban national, divorced her husband in 1997. Now, more than 10 years later, she and her ex are still living in the same two-bedroom apartment with their adult children. While many Cubans do not want to be on record as openly criticizing their government for the housing shortage, it's not difficult to imagine how many people must be affected by this issue.

The result has been a type of black market for housing, where people meet strangers on the beach, looking to swap their two-bedroom apartment for two one-bedroom units. This is a black market because under the communist rule, all housing changes and moves must be first approved by the government.

The article I read referred to this as a testament to "Cubans' ability to stay friendly — or at least civil — under the most awkward of circumstances." I guess, but I'm glad I don't have to do it.

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We do a lot of writing here at FWW about how to navigate through a divorce and then move beyond it. And there's no shortage of advice on the topic. I read a lot of these types of "tips" articles, quoting one expert after another, all of them pretty much saying the same things. Like anything else repetitive, it begins to lose its meaning after a while, particularly since the advice always seems like it's being offered in a vacuum. There's only so much "divorce theory" you can read before you wonder how much of the so-called insight really holds any water in practical application.

Well, I saw a piece in the Vancover Sun about a book on divorced couples compiled by a radio producer for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Each chapter is an essay about a divorced couple that has managed to put aside their own differences and sometimes go to extreme measures to keep life on an even keel for their children. The writer, herself, is divorced and shares a house with her ex husband. He lives on one floor, she lives on another, and their kids have both parents under one roof, so to speak.

It sounds like this book might offer a lot of real-world solutions for families that are breaking up. Of course, there's no such thing as one size fits all, and what these people have done may not work for you. But maybe some variation on the solutions they've come up with will prove useful to you. And maybe reading their stories can offer a little bit of hope that it can all work out for the best.

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Later this month in Austria, they’re going to have what is being called the world’s first divorce fair. The event will bring together all sorts of resources to help people navigate their way through the end of a marriage -- everything from legal information and tips for spying on your cheating spouse to advice on how to help children deal with what’s happening.

Provided that this doesn’t just turn into a way for money-grubbing attorneys to drum up more business, I think it’s a great idea. As prevalent as divorce is in the U.S., it seems like it’s only a matter of time before events like this one take place here.

The only drawback I can see is that it could be rather awkward to walk up to someone at a booth in a crowded convention hall and start asking for advice or talking about your own situation. Divorce is such a personal thing, it seems like the dynamic of the interactions at an event like this might be a bit stilted. Still, it’s an interesting and worthwhile-sounding concept.

One rather ironic thing, though. The organizer of this event also organizes wedding fairs. Isn’t that versatile?

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