Good news for would-be adulterers in South Korea!

The country’s Supreme Court ruled this week that people who are in the process of a mutually agreed upon divorce won’t get arrested for having sex outside of marriage.

Previously, those who had sex with someone other than their spouse before their divorce was finalized were considered to have committed adultery. Adultery is kind of a big deal in Korea. Like, criminal act with two years of jail time big deal.

The ruling came after a 57-year-old man in the process of divorcing his wife was arrested for having sex with, wait for it, a barmaid. (It’s always the barmaid.) After 25 years of marriage, the man who is only identified in the media as Chung, decided to pack his bags. After a bit of stewing, his wife agreed to the divorce, and they set up separate households while they figured out their finances and he got on with screwing the barmaid.

Mrs. Chung got wind of the liaison and decided to call the fuzz. Apparently, Chung got off. Get it?

With over 11,000 couples filing for divorce each year and citing infidelity as their platform, there are a lot of potential criminals hanging out in the bars of Korea. Last year alone, more than 1,200 people were indicted for sleeping around.

What I want to know is, what’s the charge for sleeping with the spouse you decided you were divorcing? Because in this writer’s opinion, sleeping with the ex leads to more problems than going home with the barmaid.

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I would like to tell you that I was once married to Che Guevara, but that would be a lie. (Your first clue is that Che died in 1967, one week after my mother turned 11.)

Since the revolutionary with a modern-day cult following couldn't have me, he had to settle for Hilda Gadea, who has written "My Life With Che", a book chronicling her tumultuous marriage to — and subsequent divorce from — the rebel with a very real cause.

The book is being billed as the history that starts where “The Motorcycle Diaries” left off.

Gadea, who met Guevara in 1953 at the tail end of his motorcycle tour across Latin America, was not initially impressed. "He seemed superficial, egotistical and conceited." As they swooned over poetry and a mutual love of the Guatemalan government, though, she changed her tune and they got married in 1956, six months before their daughter Hildita was born.

It seems Gadea wasn’t the only one with doubts about the romance. A few days before their marriage, Che wrote in his diary, "For someone else it might be one of the great moments in their life, but for me the whole business is rather painful. I'm going to be a father, and in a few days I'm going to marry Hilda. For her, this decision was a dramatic one; for me it was hard. She's finally getting what she wants, though only for the time being as far as I'm concerned, even if she hopes it'll be for good."

Che was right, and when mother and baby Hildita joined him after an extended absence in January 1959, he greeted her with the news that he had met someone else and wanted a divorce. He married his second wife a few days after the ink was dry and was still married to her when he died eight years later.

You'll be happy to note that he still found the time to father another child out of wedlock a few years before his death.

Your mother was right. If he does it with you, he'll do it to you.

Saudi men who divorce non-Saudi women are currently allowed to force their wives to leave the country and in many cases never see their children again.

Unlike in Western countries where marriage to a citizen grants automatic citizenship in and of itself, non-Saudi women who marry Saudi men do not get citizenship and can be asked to leave the country at any time. Since the children are the property of their father, the ex-wives can't take the kids with them.

One divorced mother of six who is originally from Syria told the Saudi Gazette that since she got divorced she has not been allowed to see her kids. She is terrified of being expelled from Saudi Arabia and never seeing them again. Her oldest child is only eight years old, and they "still need the care of their mother," she said.

The Saudi Arabian Foreign Ministry is in the process of examining possible solutions, including granting residence permits for women caring for their children.
While this is great in theory, I have a feeling that most Saudi ex-husbands will find a way to throw a monkey wrench into the best laid plans. The Foreign Ministry might let the women stay in the country, but the ex is under no obligation to let them anywhere near the kids.

While I sympathize with the plight of these women, there's an element of "What did you think was going to happen?" going on here. We've said it enough times before — Saudi Arabia is not exactly known for its women's rights movement, and the laws are barbaric at best. When it comes to Saudi marriage proposals, let the buyer beware.

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It looks like Jim and Dina McGreevey are back in court this morning dealing with alimony. Yes, again. Talks have broken down again and they have to go in and have the judge sort out their mess to figure out who owes what to whom. Raise your hand if you're surprised. It's OK, I'll wait.

Perhaps I am the only person on the planet who is infinitely sympathetic to Jim McGreevey. Britney Spears, too. Oh, and let's not forget the ever pleasant Heather Mills?

I love these fine, upstanding citizens because they keep being moronic and I keep getting paid to write about it. If they could get it together to act like civilized human beings I'd be looking for a job right now.

Last week they finally agreed on custody arrangements for their daughter. Lawyers are hanging out behind closed doors and the estranged couple meet this morning at 10 a.m. to try and hammer out the financial details of the divorce and generally make a spectacle of themselves.

I hope it takes a long time — my youngest needs new glasses and my oldest is looking into summer camps.

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Although it's only May of 2008, Mr. Kent Gramm is having a bad year. After 30 years of marriage and more than 20 years of teaching, Mr. Gramm is getting divorced and leaving his teaching post at the same time.

Mr. Gramm currently teaches at Wheaton College, a well known conservative Evangelical Christian school, which requires all of its employees to display behavior acceptable to the school's religious teaching.

All employees sign a "statement of faith and community covenant," which spells out exactly the kind of behavior the school will accept.

Drinking, smoking, and gambling are not on the list, and dancing was only allowed four years ago after being banned during the Civil War.

While the school acknowledges that divorce can happen, they need to know all of the details of the divorce to determine if the employee has broken his signed statement by exhibiting unacceptable behavior.

Mr. Gramm acknowledges that he signed the statement but does not believe he should have to disclose the details of his divorce. As he is aware that not disclosing the details will get him fired, he has agreed to resign and will stay only until the end of the school term.

"I think it's wrong to have to accuse your spouse and to discuss with your employer your personal life and marital situation," Gramm said. "But I don't feel badly treated. There has been an attitude of compassion here."

As the school is concerned about how the behavior of one of its teachers will affect the student body, Mr. Gramm decided to discuss his resignation and the reasons behind it with his students. "I want them to know that divorce happens," Gramm said. "That you aren't deserted by God because your life doesn't turn out the way you expect. I hope this helps them acquire a broader understanding of what Christianity is and what faithfulness means."

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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I have never been so angry in my life. Coming from a woman who separated from her husband after four months of marriage, that's saying something.

A girl in Yemen went to court last week to prosecute her father for making her marry a man 22 years her senior. She went to the court by herself looking for a judge to try her case. Her name is Nojoud Muhammed Nasser, and she is eight.

My son is eight. He does not yet have the hand-eye coordination to play his brand new PlayStation. He still needs me to cut his meat for him when it's too tough. On rough days, he still sleeps with his blankie.

"Whenever I wanted to play in the yard he beat me and asked me to go to the bedroom with him."

She wanted to play in the yard. The girl is trying to sit outside and build goddamn sand castles and her "husband" drags her upstairs and rapes her.

Up until 10 years ago, Yemeni law said that children could not marry until 15. In 1998 that law changed, allowing parents to contract their children out into marriage, although their spouse is not allowed to engage them in sexual activity until maturity. For the record, that 10-year-old law was enacted two years before little Nojoud's birth.

The husband is in jail. "Yes I was intimate with her, but I have done nothing wrong, as she is my wife and I have the right and no one can stop me. But if the judge or other people insist that I divorce her, I will do it. It's ok."

Well, thank you, Faez. That's very big of you.

The father, who beat her when she objected to the marriage, was also jailed but released when he suffered health problems. The court does not plan to return her to her family, as there would be nothing to stop them from forcing her to marry again. She will instead be placed in the care of a non-governmental children's organization.

There but for the grace of God go we.

It looks like, once again, people are in an uproar about the divorce process becoming more automated. We talked about this a while back when one Florida county made it possible for spouses to fill out their divorce applications online. Now Australia's in on it, and they're complaining too.

"It's an unfortunate reflection of the times in which we live that these things could be so extraordinarily convenient as to perhaps make people rush to that kind of action," says Mark Holzworth of the Australian Family Association Queensland. "I think sometimes the cold hard document in front of us...causes us to reflect a little more, think a little deeper."

Sorry, Mark, but I'm going to have to disagree on this one. Divorce is never easy, and making the red-tape a little simpler to navigate doesn't make it so.

This kind of thing makes me crazy. The "family association" types act like we're all waltzing around in perfectly happy marriages until we read in the paper that we can break up our entire family online. Then we're tripping over our index fingers to click, "divorce."

No. That's not how it goes and it's not how it ever has gone and it's not how it ever will go. Normal people do not get divorced this way. If someone wants to get divorced because of this, nobody wanted to be married to them anyway.

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When you have a Google News alert for the term "divorce," you get some crazy stuff in your inbox. Most of it gets immediately thrown into the virtual round file, but this recent piece in the Korean Times stopped me in my tracks.

"There may be many factors driving couples to a divorce, but what makes them run out of patience the quickest?" Hmm. Good question.

According to a statistics from the Korea Wedding Culture Research Center, when there's cheating involved, couples tend to hit the courts between seven and eight years post "I do." Family troubles bring the split after 3.7 years and money drama comes in at around 5.9. Drug addiction — drug addiction! Did that really make the list? — causes a split after around 6.6 years, and physical illness comes in at 5.3 years.

Interesting stuff, but what does it mean?

What I took away from it is the fact that people will stay with a crack addict or an adulterer longer than they will stay with someone who has a pain in the ass mother. Crazy stuff, and it makes me realize my mother wasn't so archaic when she told me I wasn't marrying the man, I was marrying his family.

Also noteworthy are the answers from the couples who didn't necessarily get divorced. Apparently, Korean couples lose sexual chemistry with their spouses after three or four years, causing researchers to suggest that Koreans get a three-year-itch to coincide with our seven-year-itch. Who knew?

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It seems like judges outside of the West are starting to understand the value of joint custody, in India at least. I read an article over the weekend stating joint custody rulings are becoming a growing trend in India, and I have to say, I'm impressed.

I wrote a few weeks ago about the rising divorce rate in India. With a rising divorce rate comes the need for more enlightened views on divorce rulings — when it's the rule, rather than the exception, better standards need to be put in place. Thankfully, it looks like judges are starting to pay attention to that in their custody decisions. While there is no law in place demanding joint custody in cases where there is no history of problematic parenting, lawyers are calling for one.

"Most of the couples who come to seek divorce are good people but the problem is that they may not be compatible and hence unable to live with each other. But the child needs to grow in a healthy environment with the involvement of both the parents," says Mrunalini Deshmukh, a family law attorney.

Finally, people are starting to understand that just because Mom and Dad can't get along does not mean one of them is a crappy parent. It's not the kids' fault they can't work it out.

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