Perhaps you’d like to make an appointment with a divorce lawyer for the first week in October. Forget it. The first week of October is when lawyers who specialize in separation, divorce, and custody issues will be going to Scottsdale, Arizona, to play golf.

Well, they also go to sit through a series of Mandatory Continuing Legal Education lectures. Most states require their lawyers to bundle up the spouse and rug rats and travel to some far off destination to sit through lectures and earn continuing education credits.

In some cases, MCLE points can also be earned if lawyers listen to audio CDs, or do interactive online coursework, or — old school — actually read some printed matter.

The idea is that they keep up with what’s new in their field.

So what’s new in Family Law?

The American Bar Association conference at the Camelback Inn in Scottsdale is offering the following courses for CLE credit:

• (At Least) 10 Things Every Family Lawyer Should Know about Assisted Reproductive Technology Law. Issues like who’s the mother, who’s the father, and who gets custody of the embryos.

• Retirement Benefits, Part 1 (led by a QDRO expert, as in Qualified Domestic Relations Order, the thing that gives a spouse a right to the other spouse’s pension benefits.)

• Retirement Benefits, Part II (ERISA, Employee Retirement Income Security Act, which applies to COBRA for health insurance, retirement and other benefits)

• Understanding the Sweeping Changes to the Bankruptcy Code as it Affects Divorce and Divorcing Parties (Just as it says)

• Ethical Consideration in Collaborative Law: Can I Do It? Should I Do It? Where Are the Potholes? (This one is a puzzler… lawyers are concerned that they can’t or shouldn’t do collaborative divorces… like what? What potholes? That they have to promise not to take the case to court?)

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.”

Psychology Today blogger Dr. Stephen T. Sinatra tipped us off to a recent study on the effects of marriage and heart health. Turns out, staying in an unhealthy relationship can do more than damage your psyche: It can calcify your arteries. Says Sinatra:

Married people experience less cardiovascular disease than single people, however, a bad marriage can be disastrous to the heart.

Researchers studied married couples' communication styles while also tracking their heart health, concluding that women who experienced severe hostility during marital disputes had the highest level of calcification. Husbands who exhibited the most controlling behavior during marital disputes had the highest of all men in the study.

What's happening? The body is producing stress chemicals, and the angrier or more controlling you are, the more your arteries suffer.

I'm thinking a new slogan here: "Divorce: It does a body good."

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."

"Sex is the leading cause of divorce," says the headline of a new survey released in small town England.

Considering the cultural stereotype attached to the English and their sex lives, this will probably bring relief to millions of British women who, as popular opinion would have it, would gladly never have sex again. Don't have sex, don't get divorced, and live happily ever after in a G-rated utopia.

Tragically, though, it's not the sex itself that's leading to all the divorce say the people behind the study. It's sex-related causes. You know, porn surfing, infidelity, cross-dressing. Yup, cross-dressing.

According to the study done by Bedfordshire lawyers, cross-dressing by married people in the area happens often enough that it made the list of causes for divorce.

Bedfordshire, as it happens, is 10 minutes from where my mother lives. She tells me she's surrounded only by horses, but it would appear that she left out the hundreds of men in sequined palazzo pants and size 12 patent leather pumps.

The details of the study indicated that 43 percent of divorces in the area cited sex as the primary cause, although "lifestyle" issues came in at number two with 37 percent. (And secret cross-dressing isn't a lifestyle issue?)

Money came in at 11 percent, but lawyers are predicting this number is on the increase since people are losing money hand over fist and that's bound to cause some strain. Again, cross-dressing can be implicated here, as a good Coach bag for each spouse certainly makes a dent in the Disney World fund, and the wife is likely to get tetchy.

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.

The divorce news from London is confusing.

First we were told that divorces were increasing because of bad economic times. The men who were out of work were rushing to get divorced, it was said, while their incomes were nonexistent. And the women who were married to still-employed husbands were rushing to get divorced while their husbands were still making big bucks.

As a rationale, those don’t really wash, since either spouse can apply to have maintenance and support adjusted as circumstances change.

And now there’s been a national study in the UK, and it turns out the divorce rate in England and Wales last year was the lowest it has been in 26 years, despite the travails of Paul McCartney and Heather Mills.

The rate fell to 11.9 divorces per thousand married people in 2007 — the lowest since 1981 — compared to 12.2 per thousand married people in 2006, according to the British Office for National Statistics.

“Since 1997 the average age at divorce in England and Wales has risen from 40.2 to 43.7 years for men and from 37.7 to 41.2 years for women, partly reflecting the rise in age at marriage,” the report said.

Divorces in the United States reached their peak in 1981 (blame the 70s) as well, with 5.3 per thousand of the total population. (In an apples to apples comparison, the United States has a higher divorce rate than Great Britain.)

The American divorce rate has been sinking ever since, hitting around 3.6 per thousand of the total population in 2005, the most recent year for which figures are available. U.S. figures are gathered from 46 states and the District of Columbia. Four states (California, Colorado, Indiana, and Louisiana) do not report divorce statistics.

Although the current record stands at $180 million, The Mirror is projecting a Michael Spencer, a brokerage firm executive and Tory party treasurer, and his wife's divorce could top that figure.

Spencer and wife Lorraine were married 25 year when they split late last week. He's ranked 62nd wealthiest person in Britain; she's looking at a major payout, as recent settlements have awarded as much as 50 percent to exes.

The Telegraph reported on his vast sums, ranking Spencer Britain's fifth most powerful banker:

"...he has homes in Holland Park, New York, and Suffolk, a large private wine cellar and an extensive art collection. For his 50th birthday, he threw a $2.75 million party near St Tropez, with live music from Robbie Williams."

Yes, pop star Robbie Williams, who played one hour of his greatest hits for a mere $1 million.

Just as Spencer indulges, he also knows how to hand over the cash to just causes. His brokerage firm, ICAP, which he founded in 1986, rings in the holidays every year with Charity Day. Traders compete to raise the most money, donating all profits to organizations of their choice. Last year's total: $12 milion.

Get ready for a hefty settlement. Looks like Charity Day might come twice this year...

Photo: thisismoney.co.uk